Скачать или смотреть Devops SRE Interview Question 89 How to Handle Secrets in GitHub Actions

Today, we're going to discuss interview questions related to GitHub Actions. GitHub Actions is a crucial tool for DevOps and SRE professionals, as it is one of the most common methods used to implement CI/CD pipelines. If you've watched my previous video on key areas for DevOps and SRE roles, you'll remember that after cloud, CI/CD pipelines were highlighted as the second most important area to master.

So, while cloud tops the list, CI/CD pipelines come in a close second. It's essential to be familiar with tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or GitLab Runners, or something equivalent. Among these, GitHub Actions stands out as perhaps the most common, possibly even surpassing Jenkins, which has been losing some of its appeal. GitHub Actions, with its integration with GitHub repositories, is gaining significant momentum and may already be the leading CI/CD pipeline tool. Therefore, it's critical to have a solid understanding of it.

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Now, onto the question: In GitHub Actions, how do you use secrets, and why are they important?

Imagine you're writing a GitHub pipeline job that needs to log in to an external service, such as Twitter or another API requiring an API key, password, or even an SSH key. These credentials are sensitive and should not be included in the repository. The challenge is to ensure that your automated pipeline has access to these secrets without exposing them to anyone else.

GitHub provides a solution through what are called "contexts," one of which is the "secrets" context. When your job runs, it has access to this secrets context. You can store your API key or other sensitive information in this context, and your job can retrieve it from there. Since the key is not part of the repository code or logs, it remains hidden from others who might have access to the repository.

Think of it like a closet in an open room. The room is accessible, but the closet is private. Someone in the room (the pipeline) can access the closet (the secrets context), retrieve the key, complete the task, and no one else is any the wiser.

To summarize, you store the key in the secrets context, which the pipeline can access. For example, if your secret is named `API_KEY`, you can access it in your job with `$secrets.API_KEY`.

I hope this explanation was clear. I'll see you in the next video!