DigitalOcean based ephemeral VMs for Github Actions

Worm, short for Workflow Runner Maker; allows for faster build times utilizing the power of clouuuuuuuuddddd

I made this because I wanted to utilize the capabilities of DigitalOcean Droplets to run self hosted runners, without an extraordinary bill at the end of the month.

Use at your own peril. I don't claim to provide any warranty of code quality, but it's working for me.

Flow

This takes a slightly more manual approach to things, requiring manual steps to start and stop the workflows.

This is different to the AWS Based one written by Philips Labs, as you are required to explicitly setup the VM and tear it down for each run. Thanfully it's fairly simple to actually do. Using this approach does allow for a lot more flexibility in how you do things, as you can run multiple workflows on one machine, and then tear it down.

Usage

First, you're going to need to get a Github PAT with the following permissions:

repo
workflow

And you will also need to create a DigitalOcean API key. These aren't scoped, but if they end up becoming scoped in the future, I'll update the repo.

From there, you'll need to reference this repo in your Workflows.

# .github/workflows/your-workflow-name.yaml
jobs:
  spin-up-droplet:
    name: Spin up Droplet
    uses: oxide-one/worm/.github/workflows/spinup.yaml@main
    with:
      name: gha-${{ github.run_id }}-${{ github.run_number }}
    secrets:
      access-token: ${{ secrets.YOUR_GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
      do-access-token: ${{ secrets.YOUR_DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN }}

This will create a Droplet for you that will register to the repo you triggered it from.

Then, run the rest of your workflow, referencing the 'spin up' job, to make sure it's triggered afterwards

# .github/workflows/your-workflow-name.yaml
<...>
  do-things-on-runner:
    needs: spin-up-droplet # <- The ID of the 'spin up' job
    runs-on: self-hosted
    steps:
        <...>

Once all of the actions you want to run are completed, make sure you tear down the Droplet!

<...>
  tear-down-droplet:
    needs: 
    - do-things-on-runner # <- The ID of previous jobs
    name: Spin Down Droplet
    if: always() # <- REQUIRED
    uses: oxide-one/worm/.github/workflows/teardown.yaml@main
    with:
      name: gha-${{ github.run_id }}-${{ github.run_number }}
    secrets:
      access-token: ${{ secrets.YOUR_GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
      do-access-token: ${{ secrets.YOUR_DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN }}

You can reference one Job ID, or multiple in your needs: so that they can all run on the same Droplet, one after another.

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
name	string	Yes	None	Droplet name
image	string	No	ubuntu-21-10-x64	Droplet Image name
region	string	No	fra1	Droplet Region
size	string	No	c-32	Droplet Size

Secrets

Name	Description
access-token	Github Personal Access Token
do-access-token	DigitalOcean Access Token