[Normal_gaussian]

GHA have always been a PITA for any serious DevOps; it's quite clear they were designed to integrate in 7 lines of code and then tell everyone who complains that they're doing it wrong.

This does not surprise me.

[freedomben]

It is a PITA, but that can be significantly improved IMHO if you just write shell script wrappers for your tasks. Not only does it make it easier to run CI locally, but it also makes it so much easier to move platforms in the future.

When the GH action YAML is just invoking shell scripts, I find it quite pleasant to use

[tracker1]

That's mostly been my approach as well... I've also started relying on Deno for a lot of general shell scripting as you can use repository modules without an install step and shebang works outside Windows (or inside with bash).

[jamesfinlayson]

Yeah this what I've always done too - already had to migrate from GitHub to GitLab once and a test.sh script saved me a lot of time.

[datadrivenangel]

You've perfectly described how microsoft operates and how github actions is apparently based on AzureDevOps pipelines.

[youre-wrong3]

No. GHA has always been trash before MS got to it. A lot of GHA influenced ADO.

[tracker1]

IMO the .yaml config for ADO was an improvement... though it carries similar issues to GHA. I mostly use it as a script runner.