When developing a custom GitHub Action, you should test and run it locally before pushing it to your repository. Initially, I created a script that allowed me to run it locally, but over the weekend, I found a better way by using the @github/local-action command-line tool. Show image GitHub local-action debugger In this post, I will show you how to use the @github/local-action command-line tool to test your custom GitHub Action locally. Prerequisites To start with the @github/local-action command-line tool, it is best to already have a custom GitHub Action you want to test. If you don’t have ..read more

As various projects I maintain for customers include end-to-end (E2E) tests using Playwright, which run on a daily schedule and on every new release, I wanted to automate following up on failed tests. Instead of manually creating issues, I automated the process using GitHub Actions and the GitHub API. This worked great, but I thought to myself, why not share this with the world? So, I created a GitHub Action that does exactly that. Show image Sample issue created by the Playwright Issue Creator action In this blog post, I will explain how you can use GitHub Action to create issues on failed P ..read more

When you work in a team that uses Microsoft Teams as its primary communication tool, it can be useful to report your test results directly to a Teams channel. This way, everyone on your team can quickly see the test results and act on them if needed. Show image Playwright test results in Microsoft Teams In this article, I will show you how you can report your Playwright test results to a Microsoft Teams channel. Prerequisites Before you can start reporting your Playwright test results to Microsoft Teams, you need to have the following: A Playwright project A Microsoft Teams webhook URL The p ..read more

When you manage multiple repositories on GitHub, you can centralize your project health files like issue templates, pull request templates, code of conduct, and more. By centralizing those files, you can automatically reuse them across all your repositories or overwrite them when needed. You can achieve this by creating a special repository called .github. info You can read more about this feature in the Creating a default community health file documentation. I had forgotten about this feature, but I was reminded of it when I was setting up a new repository and had to add my funding.yml file ..read more

In the July 2024 release of Visual Studio Code, extension developers will be able to use GitHub Copilot’s Language Model API (LLM) to their advantage by using the Language Model API. This new Language Model API (LLM) allows you to retrieve the available LLMs in Visual Studio Code and make requests. info You can read more about it in the Language Model API documentation. The nice thing about this new API is that you can use it in your extension any way you want. For instance, you can integrate your extension into the GitHub Copilot chat, perform requests from your extension commands, create y ..read more

One key benefit of using command URIs in your Visual Studio Code extensions is the ability to trigger commands from links in the editor. Those links can be added to various places in the extension, such as hover cards, notifications, webviews, and completion item details. info A command URI starts with the command: scheme followed by the command name and optional arguments. The command is executed in the editor when the user clicks on the link. You can read more about Command URIs in the Command URIs - VS Code Documentation. Another place where you can utilize command URIs is in the descript ..read more

For a new Visual Studio Code extension called CommitHelper, I wanted to integrate the extension in the Source Control Management (SCM) input. The extension should provide a list of predefined commit messages from which the user can select by using a slash / in the input field. Show image Source Control Management Input I got the idea from the GitHub Pull Requests extension that provides a similar experience when tagging/linking issues. Show image GitHub Pull Requests - Tagging issues In this article, I will explain how to integrate your Visual Studio Code extension into the SCM input. Using ..read more

A couple of days ago, someone opened an issue for Front Matter CMS about the auto-update of the modified date in their articles that did not follow the date format. In the issue, they shared a video recording of the problem. I noticed that GitHub Codespaces was used. GitHub Codespaces provides you with a cloud-based development environment for your repository. When I looked into the issue, I noticed it was related to the fact that the GitHub Codespace uses UTC/GMT as its time zone. You can verify this by running the date command in the GitHub Codespace terminal. Show image Date and time resul ..read more

Ever since I created the Visual Studio Code - Demo Time extension, I have been experimenting with ways of taking full advantage of presenting my slides and demos more interactively. A couple of weeks ago at Cloud Summit, I did a presentation about GitHub Actions and scripted my whole slide and demo flow with the help of the Slidev and the Demo Time extension. Show image Presenting from Visual Studio Code In this article, I explain how I am using Slidev and the Demo Time extension to present and perform live coding without the stress of demo gods. The slides As mentioned, I used Slidev for my ..read more

There have been a couple of changes in SharePoint recently related to retrieving access tokens for your SharePoint Framework solutions. One of the changes is that MSAL V3 now uses the /_api/Microsoft.SharePoint.Internal.ClientSideComponent.Token.AcquireOBOToken API to retrieve the access token. Typically, this API was only used when loading your solution from Microsoft Teams, but it will now also be used when loading your solution from SharePoint. Due to this change, one customer started to experience issues with their SPFx solution. The solution used the @pnp/graph library to retrieve the acc ..read more