Adding versions to your GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions, in its beta phase, introduces a powerful feature allowing users to execute builds and deployments directly from their code, although it lacks a build number system typically found in CI environments. Matthew Casperson discusses using GitVersion, a tool that generates semantic version numbers from Git tags, as a solution to this limitation, by leveraging the Git repository as the versioning source without additional tools. The text explains using the shared filesystem in GitHub Actions to pass version information between jobs, addressing the challenge of capturing job outputs for subsequent use. The example provided details a workflow for building a Python AWS Lambda application, demonstrating how to integrate GitVersion with Octopus CLI tools to manage application packaging and deployment. Despite some initial hurdles in the beta release, such as the absence of variable passing between jobs, the integration of these tools showcases the flexibility and potential of GitHub Actions in enhancing CI/CD processes.