January 14, 2026
Push, wait, rage, repeat
I Hate GitHub Actions with Passion
Endless build fails spark fury; crowd yells 'use act'; one commenter questions skill vs hate
TLDR: A developer slammed GitHub Actions after an ARM Linux build kept failing and every tweak took minutes to test. The crowd split: many insist on running workflows locally with act and keeping logic in scripts, while one commenter poked the bear by asking if hate signals lack of skill—sparking lively debate.
A developer lit up GitHub Actions—a service that auto-runs tests and builds when you push code—after one of four machines (Linux on ARM chips) kept saying a tool wasn’t found. He blames the platform for hiding a program built for a different chip, turning every fix into a two‑minute “push, wait, rage” loop. The comments? A chorus. Team Practical shouts act loud and proud—a local simulator so you can run these automation scripts on your laptop before pushing. spockz and Hamuko beat that drum hard. Meanwhile, Team Script Sanctity cheers the line: don’t let Actions manage your logic; keep scripts under your control, treating it like gospel. Weekend hero frankwiles flexes with a new tool, gg, that watches the most recent run so you stop click‑hunting.
Then the plot twist: Team Skill Check shows up. User bryanrasmussen asks if hating a tool means you’re not skilled enough to love it, sparking a spicy mini‑debate. Some clap back: It’s not you, it’s YAML—the plain text recipe file powering Actions—while others say learning the quirks is part of the job. Jokes fly about playing chess by snail mail and screaming into YAML. Verdict from the crowd: run things locally with [act], keep logic in real scripts, and treat Actions as a button—not a brain.
Key Points
- •A Rust build script (build.rs) for the tmplr project uses CUE to generate documentation and version/help files.
- •The GitHub Actions CI run failed on the Linux ARM runner with a missing command, while other platforms passed.
- •The issue is attributed to GitHub Actions’ isolated matrix behavior, where the Linux ARM runner did not access the x86_64 CUE binary.
- •Troubleshooting required repeated edits to the ci.yml workflow and pushes, with each loop taking approximately 2–3 minutes.
- •The author recommends keeping logic in scripts under version control and having GitHub Actions only invoke those scripts.