Github workflow for a C application

Question

This is my first try at automating building and testing some code for Linux, MacOS, and Windows (this took the longest to set up). It just builds and runs the tests with make:

name: Arena Tests
on: [workflow_dispatch, push, pull_request]
jobs:
 test_unixy:
 runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
 strategy:
 matrix:
 os: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest]
 steps:
 - name: Checkout
 uses: actions/checkout@v4
 - name: Build
 run: make
 - name: Test
 run: make test
 test_windows:
 runs-on: windows-latest
 defaults:
 run:
 shell: msys2 {0}
 steps:
 - name: Setup MSYS2
 uses: msys2/setup-msys2/@v2
 with:
 update: true
 install: >-
 git
 make
 gcc
 - name: Checkout
 uses: actions/checkout@v4
 - name: Build
 run: make
 - name: Test
 run: make test

Review Request:

Anything, everything. There's some duplication too, how can I avoid that?

• J_H: You discovered a bug in your makefile, that it hardcodes "gcc-13". Better that you fix the bug there, than in the source we see in this submission.
• Madagascar: @J_H Fair enough, post updated.

Answer 1

You could avoid the duplication (and the display of the tests as 2 separate jobs in the GUI), if you united the *nix and Windows jobs, using a single matrix.
The problem that you probably encountered is setting the default shell depending on the os. This is possible though not quite obvious:

jobs:
 tests:
 runs-on: ${{ matrix.sys.os }}
 strategy:
 matrix:
 sys:
 - { os: windows-latest, shell: 'msys2 {0}' }
 - { os: ubuntu-latest, shell: bash }
 - { os: macos-latest, shell: bash }
 defaults:
 run:
 shell: ${{ matrix.sys.shell }}
 steps:
 - name: Setup MSYS2
 if: ${{ matrix.sys.os == "windows-latest" }}
 uses: msys2/setup-msys2/@v2
 with:
 update: true
 install: >-
 git
 make
 gcc
 - name: Checkout
 uses: actions/checkout@v4
 - name: Build
 run: make
 - name: Test
 run: make test

Apart from that, the workflow is simple enough, and I don't see any need for improvement.