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Maven / GitHub Actions Interview Questions

What are steps, and what is the difference between run: and uses: in a step?

Steps are the individual tasks that make up a job. They run sequentially in the order listed, share the job's working directory and environment variables, and each step can read outputs produced by earlier steps. Every step has an optional name: for display in the logs and can set a conditional if: expression.

The two fundamental forms a step can take are run: and uses::

  • run: — Executes one or more shell commands directly on the runner. The default shell on Linux/macOS is bash; on Windows it is pwsh. You can override this with shell: python or shell: cmd. Use run: for any custom script, build command, or one-liner that does not need to be reused across repositories.
  • uses: — References a pre-built action. The action can come from the GitHub Marketplace (actions/checkout@v4), another repository (org/repo@v1), a local path in the same repo (./my-action), or a Docker image (docker://alpine:3.19). Actions encapsulate reusable logic behind a stable interface with typed inputs and outputs.
steps:
  - name: Checkout code
    uses: actions/checkout@v4          # calls a reusable action

  - name: Build project
    run: ./gradlew build               # runs a shell command

  - name: Run custom script
    run: |
      echo "Multi-line"
      echo "shell script"
    shell: bash

A step cannot use both run: and uses: simultaneously — they are mutually exclusive. The key decision rule: reach for uses: when the task is a well-known, versioned operation (checkout, setup-node, docker-login); use run: for project-specific commands unique to your repo.

Which step key executes raw shell commands directly on the runner?
Can a single GitHub Actions step use both run: and uses: at the same time?

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More Related questions...

What is GitHub Actions and what problems does it solve? What are the key components of GitHub Actions — workflows, jobs, steps, actions, and runners? How is a GitHub Actions workflow file structured, and where must it be placed? What are workflow triggers (on:) and which event types does GitHub Actions support? What is the difference between push, pull_request, and workflow_dispatch triggers? What are jobs in GitHub Actions, and how do they run in parallel by default? What are steps, and what is the difference between run: and uses: in a step? What are runners, and what is the difference between GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners? What is the GitHub Actions Marketplace and how do you find and use actions from it? How do you use the actions/checkout action and what does it do? How do you pass environment variables and secrets to a GitHub Actions workflow? What is the difference between the env:, secrets:, and vars: contexts in GitHub Actions? How do you cache dependencies in GitHub Actions using actions/cache? How do you use matrix builds in GitHub Actions to test across multiple environments? How do you control job execution order in GitHub Actions using needs:? How do you share data between steps within a job using step outputs? How do you share build artifacts between jobs using actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact? What are reusable workflows in GitHub Actions and how do you call them? What are composite actions and when should you choose them over reusable workflows? How do you set up a Docker container service for integration tests using services: in GitHub Actions? How do you use conditional steps with if: in GitHub Actions? What are the key GitHub Actions expression contexts and what information does each provide? How do you use concurrency groups to cancel outdated workflow runs in GitHub Actions? What is the GITHUB_TOKEN and what permissions does it have? How do you trigger one GitHub Actions workflow from another using workflow_run? How do you write a custom JavaScript action for GitHub Actions? How do you write a custom Docker container action for GitHub Actions? How do you implement a complete CI/CD pipeline for a container image in GitHub Actions — build, push to a registry, and deploy? How do you implement path filtering so a workflow only runs when specific files change? How do you debug failing GitHub Actions workflows — enabling debug logging and using tmate? How do you implement branch protection rules with required GitHub Actions status checks? How do you handle large monorepos with multiple services in GitHub Actions? What are OpenID Connect (OIDC) tokens in GitHub Actions and how do they replace long-lived cloud credentials? How do you prevent secret exposure and follow security hardening best practices in GitHub Actions? What are the key differences between GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and GitLab CI?
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