Only run job on specific branch with GitHub Actions

Question

I'm relatively new to GitHub Actions and I have 2 jobs–one that runs my tests, and one that deploys my project onto a server.

Obviously I want the tests to run on every branch, but deploying should only happen when something gets pushed to master.

I'm struggling to find a way to run a job on a specific branch. I know it's possible to only run entire workflows on a specific branch, however that would mean I would have a "test" workflow and a "deploy" workflow.

This sounds like a solution, however they would run parallel. In an ideal world, the tests would run first, and only if they succeed, then the deploy job would start. This isn't the case when using 2 separate workflows.

How would I be able to achieve this? Is it possible to run jobs on a specific branch?

Answer 1

In a recent update you can now put if conditionals at job level. See the documentation here. https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#jobsjob_idif

I tested this workflow which runs the job test on every push, but only runs deploy on the master branch.

name: my workflow
on: push
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Execute tests
        run: exit 0
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: test
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/master'
    steps:
      - name: Deploy app
        run: exit 0

What follows is my original answer, and an alternative solution if you prefer to have separate workflows.

The first workflow runs for every branch except master. In this workflow you run tests only.

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - '*'
      - '!master'

The second workflow runs for just master and runs both your tests and deploys if the tests were successfully passed.

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master