Unlock GitHub Actions Expertise: 100 Questions for Senior Devs in CI/CD Automation

Basic GitHub Actions Concepts

1. What is GitHub Actions, and how does it enhance the CI/CD pipeline?
2. Explain the basic architecture of a GitHub Actions workflow.
3. What are jobs and steps in GitHub Actions workflows?
4. How do you define a GitHub Actions workflow in a .yml file?
5. What is the role of the GitHub Actions runner?
6. How do you trigger a workflow using GitHub Actions?
7. What are the differences between workflow_dispatch, push, and pull_request events in GitHub Actions?
8. How do you define secrets and environment variables in GitHub Actions workflows?
9. Explain the concept of matrix builds in GitHub Actions and how they are used for parallel jobs.
10. How can you schedule workflows using GitHub Actions cron expressions?

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GitHub Actions Workflows

1. How do you use GitHub Actions for continuous integration (CI)?
2. How do you use GitHub Actions for continuous deployment (CD)?
3. What is the workflow run status, and how do you interpret the statuses of jobs and steps in GitHub Actions?
4. How do you handle workflow retries in case of failures?
5. What is the role of the runs-on key in a job, and how does it work with different environments?
6. How do you use GitHub Actions for build and testing automation?
7. How can you integrate linting and static analysis into a GitHub Actions workflow?
8. How do you perform code coverage analysis and report the results using GitHub Actions?
9. How do you manage dependencies between jobs and steps in a GitHub Actions workflow?
10. How do you use GitHub Actions for automatic versioning and tagging?

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GitHub Actions Integrations

1. How do you integrate GitHub Actions with Docker for building and pushing containers?
2. How can you deploy to AWS using GitHub Actions?
3. How do you deploy to Azure using GitHub Actions?
4. How do you use GitHub Actions to deploy to GCP (Google Cloud Platform)?
5. How do you set up GitHub Actions for serverless deployments using AWS Lambda?
6. Explain how to integrate GitHub Actions with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning.
7. How do you use GitHub Actions with Kubernetes for container orchestration?
8. How do you integrate SonarCloud for code quality analysis within GitHub Actions workflows?
9. How do you integrate Slack notifications in a GitHub Actions workflow?
10. How do you use GitHub Actions to interact with third-party APIs during a CI/CD process?

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GitHub Actions for Advanced Automation

1. How do you define workflow conditions (e.g., if conditionals) in GitHub Actions?
2. How do you use the continue-on-error feature in GitHub Actions jobs and steps?
3. What is the role of caching in GitHub Actions, and how do you cache dependencies between workflows?
4. How do you define custom GitHub Actions using Docker containers or JavaScript?
5. How do you set up conditional jobs based on the outcome of previous steps?
6. How do you use the with keyword in GitHub Actions to pass input parameters to actions?
7. What is the purpose of GitHub Actions artifacts, and how do you use them for build outputs?
8. How do you trigger workflows in GitHub Actions from external events (e.g., API requests, webhooks)?
9. Explain the concept of workflow templates and how they improve workflow reuse.
10. How do you use GitHub Actions to trigger external services or workflows?

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GitHub Actions Best Practices

1. What are the best practices for organizing and structuring GitHub Actions workflows?
2. How do you ensure the security of your GitHub Actions workflows, especially when dealing with secrets?
3. How do you manage large workflows and avoid timeouts or failures?
4. How do you optimize build times in GitHub Actions?
5. What are the key monitoring and debugging techniques for troubleshooting failed GitHub Actions workflows?
6. How do you prevent workflow duplication and redundant builds in GitHub Actions?
7. How do you ensure that your GitHub Actions workflows are idempotent?
8. What are the rate limits of GitHub Actions, and how can you manage them in a CI/CD pipeline?
9. How do you handle API rate limits when using external services in GitHub Actions workflows?
10. What is the role of workflow status badges, and how do you implement them in your repository?

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Advanced GitHub Actions Use Cases

1. How do you set up GitHub Actions to deploy a multi-cloud application?
2. How do you implement Blue/Green deployments using GitHub Actions?
3. How do you set up canary releases using GitHub Actions?
4. How do you use GitHub Actions for disaster recovery?
5. What is the process for setting up auto-scaling or elastic environments with GitHub Actions?
6. How do you automate rollbacks in GitHub Actions when a deployment fails?
7. How do you integrate performance testing into GitHub Actions workflows?
8. How do you handle secrets management with GitHub Actions?
9. How do you automate security vulnerability scanning in a GitHub Actions workflow?
10. How do you set up multi-environment deployments using GitHub Actions (e.g., dev, staging, production)?

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GitHub Actions Security

1. What is the process of securing GitHub Actions workflows?
2. How do you manage secrets and tokens securely in GitHub Actions?
3. How do you limit the scope of secrets to specific jobs in a workflow?
4. How do you use GitHub Actions for vulnerability scanning in the CI pipeline?
5. What are GitHub Actions permissions, and how do you manage them?
6. How do you implement least privilege in GitHub Actions workflows?
7. How do you handle external dependency vulnerabilities in GitHub Actions workflows?
8. How do you use GitHub Actions with SSH keys for secure deployments?
9. What are the risks of unsafe actions in GitHub Actions, and how can you mitigate them?
10. How do you configure workflow protection rules in GitHub Actions?

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GitHub Actions Monitoring and Debugging

1. How do you monitor the health and performance of your GitHub Actions workflows?
2. How can you collect workflow run metrics from GitHub Actions?
3. How do you handle workflow failures and retries in GitHub Actions?
4. What tools do you use to debug GitHub Actions workflows?
5. How do you access workflow logs for troubleshooting purposes?
6. How do you configure email notifications for GitHub Actions workflow failures?
7. How do you use GitHub Actions audit logs for tracking workflow activity?
8. How do you handle long-running workflows or steps in GitHub Actions?
9. What is the process for workflow cancellation in GitHub Actions?
10. How do you detect workflow concurrency issues in GitHub Actions?

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GitHub Actions Performance Optimization

1. How do you cache dependencies in GitHub Actions to speed up builds?
2. How do you parallelize jobs in GitHub Actions workflows for faster execution?
3. What is the process for optimizing GitHub Actions for large repositories?
4. How do you manage workflow timeouts and prevent unnecessary delays in jobs?
5. How do you set up self-hosted runners to speed up GitHub Actions workflows?
6. How do you avoid redundant builds in GitHub Actions workflows?
7. How do you reduce build sizes in GitHub Actions workflows?
8. What strategies can you implement to optimize GitHub Actions cost when using a large number of workflows?
9. How do you implement caching and reuse of build artifacts in GitHub Actions?
10. How do you handle external resource constraints in GitHub Actions?

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GitHub Actions Best Practices

1. How do you set up versioning for GitHub Actions workflows?
2. What is the best way to manage dependencies in GitHub Actions workflows?
3. How do you handle sequential job execution to ensure a proper order of tasks?
4. How do you write reusable GitHub Actions workflows for different repositories?
5. What are the best practices for managing configurations in GitHub Actions?
6. How do you separate concerns in GitHub Actions workflows for clarity and maintainability?
7. How can you use GitHub Actions with external APIs and services efficiently?
8. How do you implement automated testing in a GitHub Actions workflow?
9. How do you handle multi-platform workflows with GitHub Actions?
10. How do you ensure workflow consistency across teams and repositories using GitHub Actions?

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