Keepalive Workflow

GitHub action to prevent GitHub from suspending your cronjob based triggers due to repository inactivity

Why

GitHub will suspend the scheduled trigger for GitHub action workflows if there is no commit in the repository for the past 60 days. The cron based triggers won't run unless a new commit is made. It shows the message "This scheduled workflow is disabled because there hasn't been activity in this repository for at least 60 days" under the cronjob triggered action.

What

This workflow will automatically create a dummy commit (or use the GitHub API) in your repo if the last commit in your repo is 50 days (default) ago. This will keep the cronjob trigger active so that it will run indefinitely without getting suspended by GitHub for inactivity.

How to use

There are three ways you can consume this library in your GitHub actions

Dummy Commit Keepalive Workflow (For GitHub Actions users)

You can just include the library as a step after one of your favorite GitHub actions. Your workflow file should have the checkout action defined in one of your steps since this library needs git CLI to work.

name: Github Action with a cronjob trigger
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 * * *"

jobs:
  cronjob-based-github-action:
    name: Cronjob based github action
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      # - step1
      # - step 2
      # - step n, use it as the last step
      - uses: gautamkrishnar/keepalive-workflow@v1 # using the workflow with default settings

Go to repository settings, Click on Actions > General. Update the "Workflow permissions" to "Read and write permissions". Click on save.

Let's take an example of [Waka Readme](https://github.com/athul/waka-readme)

name: My awesome readme
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    # Runs at 12 am UTC
    - cron: "0 0 * * *"

jobs:
  update-readme:
    name: Update this repo's README
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: athul/waka-readme@master
        with:
          WAKATIME_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.WAKATIME_API_KEY }}
      - uses: gautamkrishnar/keepalive-workflow@v1 # using the workflow with default settings

GitHub API Keepalive Workflow (For GitHub Actions users)

If you do not want dummy commits in your repository's commit history, you can use the library's GitHub API mode.

Make sure that you create a fine graded token with actions:write permission or a PAT with workflow permission. You can create it here and here respectively.
Go to settings page in your repo and create a secret with name PAT_TOKEN and use the previously created token as the value. Refer docs
Use the code from the following example, in this case you do not need actions/checkout workflow as a dependency.

name: Github Action with a cronjob trigger
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 * * *"

jobs:
  cronjob-based-github-action:
    name: Cronjob based github action
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # - step 1
      # - step 2
      # - step n, use it as the last step
      - uses: gautamkrishnar/keepalive-workflow@v1 # using the workflow in api mode
        with:
          use_api: true
          gh_token: ${{ secrets.PAT_TOKEN }}

Using via NPM (For GitHub Actions developers)

For developers creating GitHub actions, you can consume the library in your javascript-based GitHub action by installing it from NPM. Make sure that your GitHub action uses checkout action since this library needs it as a dependency. You can also ask your users to include it as an additional step as mentioned in the first part.

Install the package

Install via NPM:

npm i keepalive-workflow

Install via Yarn:

yarn add keepalive-workflow

Use it in your own GitHub action source code

const core = require('@actions/core');
const { KeepAliveWorkflow, APIKeepAliveWorkflow } = require('keepalive-workflow');

// Using the lib in Dummy commits mode
KeepAliveWorkflow(githubToken, committerUsername, committerEmail, commitMessage, timeElapsed)
  .then((message) => {
    core.info(message);
    process.exit(0);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    core.error(error);
    process.exit(1);
  });

// Using the lib in GitHub API mode
APIKeepAliveWorkflow(githubToken, {
  timeElapsed
}.then((message) => {
    core.info(message);
    process.exit(0);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    core.error(error);
    process.exit(1);
  });

Options

For GitHub Action

If you use the workflow as mentioned via GitHub actions following are the options available to you to customize its behavior.

Option	Default Value	Description	Required
`gh_token`	your default GitHub token with repo scope	GitHub access token with Repo scope	No
`commit_message`	`Automated commit by Keepalive Workflow to keep the repository active`	Commit message used while committing to the repo	No
`committer_username`	`gkr-bot`	Username used while committing to the repo	No
`committer_email`	`[email protected]`	Email id used while committing to the repo	No
`time_elapsed`	`50`	Time elapsed from the previous commit to trigger a new automated commit (in days)	No
`auto_push`	`true`	Defines if the workflow pushes the changes automatically	No
`auto_write_check`	`false`	Specifies whether the workflow will verify the repository's write access privilege for the token before executing	No
`use_api`	`false`	Instead of using dummy commits, workflow uses GitHub API to keep the repository active. This will keep your commit history clean. Make sure you set the `gh_token` parameter with a token which has `actions:write` permission enabled. This wont work with the default GitHub actions token	No

For Javascript Library

If you are using the JS Library version of the project, please consult the function's DocStrings in library.js to see the list of available parameters.