A daemon that connects to a Forgejo instance and runs jobs for continous integration. The high level [installation instructions](https://forgejo.org/docs/next/admin/actions/) are part of the Forgejo documentation.
The Forgejo runner depends on [a fork of ACT](https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/act) and is a dependency of the [setup-forgejo action](https://code.forgejo.org/actions/setup-forgejo). Together they provide a development environment with end to end testing. Each repository also has some unit testing that can be used to quickly detect the simplest mistakes such as a failure to compile or static code checking failures (vulnerability, lint, etc.).
Assuming the modifications to the [Forgejo runner](https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner) are pushed to a fork in a branch named `wip-runner-change`, a pull request will verify it compiles and the binary is sane (running `forgejo-runner --version`). It will not verify that it is able to properly run jobs when connected to a live Forgejo instance.
For end to end testing, a branch should be pushed to a fork of the [setup-forgejo action](https://code.forgejo.org/actions/setup-forgejo) with a [modification to the tests](https://code.forgejo.org/actions/setup-forgejo/src/commit/ae7f03683b7b05c7d9c6aaeacaf27843de0366a4/.forgejo/workflows/integration.yml#L10-L19), similar to:
```yaml
#
# Uncomment the following for a shortcut to debugging the Forgejo runner.
# It will build the runner from a designated repository and branch instead of
Where https://code.forgejo.org/earl-warren/runner is the URL of the Forgejo runner fork and `wip-runner-change` is the branch where the changes under test were pushed. When they do the `setup-forgejo` branch can be discarded.
The runner can be released by merging the `wip-runner-change` branch and by pushing a new tag, for instance `v10.2.3`. Once published, the `setup-forgejo` action can be updated to default to this latest version knowing it already passed integration tests.
## ACT
Assuming the modifications to [ACT](https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/act) are pushed to a fork in a branch named `wip-act-change`, a pull request will verify it compiles. It will not verify that the Forgejo runner can compile with it.
For verifying it is compatible with the Forgejo runner, a branch should be pushed to a fork of the [Forgejo runner](https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner) (for instance `wip-runner-change`) that uses the ACT version under test in the `wip-act-change` by modifying `go.mod` to contain something like the following and running `go mod tidy`:
Where https://code.forgejo.org/earl-warren/act is the URL of the act fork and `wip-act-change` is the branch where the changes under test were pushed. It will not verify that it is able to properly run jobs when connected to a live Forgejo instance. The `wip-runner-change` branch must, in turn, be tested as explained above. When the Forgejo runner modified to include the changes in the `wip-act-change` branch pass the end to end test of the `setup-forgejo` action, it is ready to be released.
ACT can be released by merging the `wip-act-change` branch and by pushing a new tag, for instance `v48.8.20`. Once published, the Forgejo runner can be updated to default to this latest version knowing it already passed end to end tests with something like:
cd setup-forgejo ; ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG=true ../runner/forgejo-runner daemon
```
### Try a sample workflow
From the Forgejo web interface, create a repository and add the following to `.forgejo/workflows/try.yaml`. It will launch the job and the result can be observed from the `actions` tab.