GitHub Workflows and GitHub Actions

The service called GitHub Actions provided by GitHub (Microsoft) allows use to run arbitrary workflows on their ephemeral servers. (aka. temporary servers)

Often this workflow is the CI (Continuous Integration) of a project, compilingt the source code, setting ups external services, running unit- and integrations tests.

In other cases this workflow is scheduled job collecting data and building a web site.

The service has a limited free tier for public repositories and you can buy minues for extensive running and for private repositories.

The name GitHub Actions is also used for some pre-defined building blocks one can use to create a Workflow.