GitHub INactions

I like the look of my blog that I deploy from markdown files on github pages (nb: This is almost entirely due to the custom CSS I wrote for it (https://wyattscarpenter.github.io/style.css) that would work in basically any HTML document and furthermore (conceptually) basically any document presentation system), but now that github pages is entirely on Actions, I am looking at the 40+ seconds of a github pages deployment with jekyll like "hmm..."

Maybe I should replace that.

Oddly, only 3 of those seconds are actually from running jekyll, though!

`Pull down action image 'ghcr.io/actions/jekyll-build-pages:v1.0.12'` takes 10 whole seconds. I don't even know what that is.

`/usr/bin/docker pull ghcr.io/actions/jekyll-build-pages:v1.0.12` Oh, it's some kind of... docker thing?
Maybe I can easily save 10 seconds.

I don't even know why it's using docker. I kind of imagine the whole environment is already in docker... or something...

The default github actions are also... written in javascript...
[assets/we simply aren't operating on the level of mutual respect I assumed.gif]




☙ Part 2 ❧




I considered pursuing a very fast GitHub action, and maybe writing a blog post about this experience, but then I got busy; in part with my actual work, and in part with my actual life; and so did not do it.

The blog post would have been called "My obsessive path to making this blog publish very fast" or something, and ideally it would have had screenshots, when pertinent.

https://github.com/features/actions
lists an example CI action as completing in 59 seconds, as though that isn't a deeply embarrassing number to display.

From the website's vague statement that
> Want to venture off the beaten path? Use the millions of open source libraries available on GitHub to create your own actions. Write them in JavaScript or create a container action—both can interact with the full GitHub API and any other public API.
I intuit that maybe you have to write them in JavaScript if you want to avoid a hideously long containerization process.

I basically forgot all about the project of trying to make my GitHub actions maximally efficient because I got too busy to do this. And, indeed, I don't think I'll ever become unbusy enough that it's a good idea to do that. They aren't even paying me, for example. Even though hypothetically this could deliver millions of dollars of value to their collective userbase and therefore company. Let it be known that if they offer me a mere million dollars I will make such an optimized Action (Or is it technically called a library? Or a workflow?) and upload it to the public.

(It's also possible that someone else has already gone to this trouble, in which case I hope somebody tells me about that!)