Overview
A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs, which run in parallel by default. To run jobs sequentially, you can define dependencies on other jobs using the jobs.<job_id>.needs keyword.
Each job runs in a runner environment specified by runs-on.
You can run an unlimited number of jobs as long as you are within the workflow usage limits. For more information, see "Usage limits and billing" for GitHub-hosted runners and "About self-hosted runners" for self-hosted runner usage limits.
If you need to find the unique identifier of a job running in a workflow run, you can use the GitHub API. For more information, see "Workflow Jobs."
Setting an ID for a job
Use jobs.<job_id> to give your job a unique identifier. The key job_id is a string and its value is a map of the job's configuration data. You must replace <job_id> with a string that is unique to the jobs object. The <job_id> must start with a letter or _ and contain only alphanumeric characters, -, or _.
Example: Creating jobs
In this example, two jobs have been created, and their job_id values are my_first_job and my_second_job.
jobs:
my_first_job:
name: My first job
my_second_job:
name: My second job
Setting a name for a job
Use jobs.<job_id>.name to a name for the job, which is displayed on GitHub.
Defining prerequisite jobs
Use jobs.<job_id>.needs to identify any jobs that must complete successfully before this job will run. It can be a string or array of strings. If a job fails, all jobs that need it are skipped unless the jobs use a conditional expression that causes the job to continue.
Example: Requiring successful dependent jobs
jobs:
job1:
job2:
needs: job1
job3:
needs: [job1, job2]
In this example, job1 must complete successfully before job2 begins, and job3 waits for both job1 and job2 to complete.
The jobs in this example run sequentially:
job1job2job3
Example: Not requiring successful dependent jobs
jobs:
job1:
job2:
needs: job1
job3:
if: ${{ always() }}
needs: [job1, job2]
In this example, job3 uses the always() conditional expression so that it always runs after job1 and job2 have completed, regardless of whether they were successful. For more information, see "Expressions."