Testing GitHub Actions

This repository is used to test the GitHub action for compiling a LaTeX document. Thanks to a lot of help of Cheng over at reddit I managed to get it up and running from scratch.

Here's what you need to do if you want to compile your LaTeX document in the cloud with GitHub Actions.

• Sign up for GitHub Actions and turn them on for a repository containing your LaTeX code
• I assume you want to have the generate PDF in the same repository as the one you're working on [1]
• Generate a gh-pages branch for your repository and make sure it's being served by GitHub pages by going to 'Settings' > 'Options' in your repository
• Generate an SSH key to use for deployment:
  • Do this with

  cd && mkdir tmp && cd tmp
  ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -o -a 100 -f actions_key

  • Go to 'Settings' > 'Deploy keys' and copy the contents of the public key (actions_key.pub) to the form field and give it write access to the repository.
  • Go to 'Settings' > 'Secrets' and copy the contents of the private key (actions_key) to a new secret. Name this secret DEPLOY_KEY. This makes sure that the key is correctly picked up by the GitHub Action below.
• Copy the main.yaml file from Xu to $your_repository/.github/workflows/main.yaml. You can name the file however you want. Change the settings in the file relating to your Git user.nameand user.email. Also take care that the file name of the LaTeX file is the same as the one you actually use in your repository.
• Commit a good version of your LaTeX file and wait a bit
• Enjoy your automatically built PDF at $username.github.io/$your_repository/main.pdf

[1]: If not, see here...