fbs-release-github-actions

This is a brief guide on how to automatically build a python application using fbs and how to automatically create installer on all platforms and a GitHub release using GitHub Actions.

fbs pro: If you have purchased fbs pro, check out this documentation on how to modify the following workflows to use the download link that you have received in a secure manner.

Project structure

Python program

The program that is bundled with fbs here and released is the full version from the fbs tutorial. This program lives in the src folder.

Python requirements

Requirements, including fbs and PyQt are stored in the requirements.txt file. It is important that the file given here contains all requirements needed to successfully compile the project. More detailed information, including how to freeze a requirement file from your current virtual environment can be found in this blog post.

Text for the next release

The text for the next release should be stored in a file named release_text.md, which lives in the root folder of the GitHub repository. Please see below in the section where the workflow files are discussed in detail for more information.

bump2version

This excellent project is used to version bump the package. More information can be found here.

For a new release, the version bump will increment the files that are mentioned in the .bumpversion.cfg configuration file. Here, only one file gets bumped, namely:

src/build/settings/base.json

This file is the fbs base file that will compile your program with the correct version.

As you can see in the configuration file, bump2version will also create a new tag as well as a commit. This is important since our release creating workflow should only run when a new tag is pushed to the repository. This tag will then be used to create the release.

Workflows

All .yml workflow files are stored for easy access in the workflows folder. In order for GitHub to run your action after a tag is pushed, the workflow file that you want to use must be located in:

.github/workflows/

The workflow files

Two kinds of workflow files were created:

• Releases for one single operating system only
• Releases for all operating systems

The difference between these workflow files is that single OS releases use the actions/upload-release-asset to add the assets to the release. Multi-OS releases use the svenstaro/upload-release-action for this asset addition. You can read up here and here about the differences. While the latter action is simpler to implement for the mulit-OS case, the former is an action that is directly supplied by GitHub Actions.

Note: Only Ubuntu, macOS Catalina, macOS BigSur, and Windows Server 2019 releases are currently possible, since these are the potential environments that GitHub Actions run under. Check here to see what runners are available.

Let's go in detail through the Linux single OS release first. The other workflows will be discussed where necessary, i.e., to point out differences.

Ubuntu single-OS release

The workflow file that goes with this description can be found in:

workflows/release-ubuntu.yml

Every action in this tutorial starts with:

on:
  push:
    # Sequence of patterns matched against refs/tags
    tags:
    - 'v*' # Push events to matching v*, i.e. v1.0, v20.15.10

This means that the action is executed whenever a tag is pushed. The tag must follow the general GitHub scheme, e.g., v0.0.5. In the action, the part 'v*' matches these tags.

name: Release Ubuntu

This next line is the name of the GitHub Action. This will also be the name that you get displayed when you click on the workflows tab in your repository.

The next line named jobs now starts the individual jobs that should be performed whenever the action is triggered. For a single-OS release creation, this is only one job.

build:
    name: Upload Release Asset
    runs-on: ubuntu-16.04
    strategy:
      matrix:
        python-version: [3.6]

The first (and here only) job is named build. First we supply the name of the job, then the operating system the job runs on. As pointed out in the PyInstaller docs, we want to use the oldest Linux available for GitHub Actions. Then we define the python versions that we want to use. For fbs, as currently required, we will use the latest supported version, i.e., 3.6. Now the job is broken up into individual steps, denoted by the title steps in line 16.

• name: Checkout code uses: actions/checkout@v2

This first step simply uses a GitHub supplied action to check out our repository.

- name: Install dependencies
run: |
  sudo apt-get install ruby ruby-dev rubygems build-essential
  sudo gem install --no-document fpm
  fpm --version

The second step will install the Linux dependencies. As you can see in the fbs tutorial, fpm is installed following these instructions.

- name: Set up Python ${{ matrix.python-version }}
  uses: actions/setup-python@v2
  with:
    python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
- name: Install dependencies
  run: |
    python -m pip install --upgrade pip
    pip install -r requirements.txt

The third and fourth step now first set up the python environment, again using a GitHub provided action, and then install the dependencies that we have stored in the requirements.txt file.

- name: Run fbs and freeze application
  run: |
    fbs freeze
    fbs installer

Step five now runs fbs freeze to create the package and then fbs installer to create the installer.

- name: Create Release
  id: create_release
  uses: actions/create-release@v1
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  with:
    tag_name: ${{ github.ref }}
    release_name: Release ${{ github.ref }}
    # body: ""  # release message, alternative to body_path
    body_path: release_text.md  # uncomment if not used
    draft: false
    prerelease: false

The sixth step creates the release. More information and options about this can be found here. Important here to note is the body_path variable. If a markdown file should be used for the release, as used here, pass this variable the filename (here release_text.md). Alternatively you can directly supply the text for the release using the (here commented out) body variable.

- name: Upload Release Asset
  id: upload-release-asset
  uses: actions/upload-release-asset@v1
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  with:
    upload_url: ${{ steps.create_release.outputs.upload_url }} # This pulls from the CREATE RELEASE step above, referencing it's ID to get its outputs object, which include a `upload_url`. See this blog post for more info: https://jasonet.co/posts/new-features-of-github-actions/#passing-data-to-future-steps
    asset_path: target/fbs_tutorial_app.deb
    asset_name: fbs_tutorial_app.deb
    asset_content_type: application/deb

This final step now adds the created binaries to the release. Note that you must specify the correct path and file names here that fbs will create! asset_path tells the action where the binary to be used can be found, asset_name tells it the name it should use in the release.

macOS single-OS release

The workflow file that goes with this description can be found in:

workflows/release-macos.yml

The macOS release works almost identical. No dependencies aside from python are required. Note that the installer generated has a different file ending.

Windows single-OS release

The workflow file that goes with this description can be found in:

workflows/release-windows.yml

Again, the Windows release looks almost identical. NSIS is already installed in GitHub windows runners. Note that the binaries for the installers have an added Setup and use the file ending .exe.

Multi-OS releases

The workflow file that goes with this description can be found in:

workflows/release-multi-os.yml

The general structure of each release is similar to the ones described above. However, multiple build jobs are included, one for every operating system of interest.

Creating the release itself is done much earlier now in order to have the relase created by the time the first job adds assets. A release can furthermore only be created once. Here it is created in the build-linux job.

To upload the binaries to the asset, the following action is used:

- name: Upload binaries to release
  uses: svenstaro/upload-release-action@v2
  with:
    repo_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    file: target/fbs_tutorial_app.deb
    asset_name: fbs_tutorial_app.deb
    tag: ${{ github.ref }}
    overwrite: true

Here, file is the name for the binary to be added and asset_name is the name of the file that will be in the release. More information on this release can be found here.

Releases

The tutorial releases were all created with the above mentioned workflows. Release v0.0.2, v0.0.3, and v0.0.4 contain the Ubuntu, Windows, and macOS versions. Release v0.0.5 contains the multi-OS release.

Questions, comments, ...

If you have questions, comments, etc. on this tutorial, please raise an issue. Any ideas for features / enhancements? I'm sure you do! Please file a feature request as well.

License

MIT, see license file.

Acknowledgements

• @Kastakin for pointing out that the oldest available Linux version should be used (Issue #2)