GitHub Actions encrypted secrets can be accessed in workflows using the secrets context. You can

directly reference the secret within an if: conditional using ${{ secrets.MySuperSecret }} to determine

whether a job or step should run based on the secret's value.

The best way for an enterprise to control which GitHub Actions run is by creating a list of approved

actions as an enterprise policy. This approach restricts workflows to only use the actions that are

explicitly allowed, ensuring security and compliance within the organization.

Caching is ideal for files that change rarely, such as dependencies or build outputs, as it speeds up

subsequent workflow runs by reusing previously cached files instead of re-downloading or rebuilding

them.

Artifacts are used for persisting files produced during a job that need to be used in later jobs or after

the workflow has ended, allowing them to be downloaded or referenced later.

While Docker can run on various operating systems, Linux is often the most common and preferred

OS for containerized workloads. Docker works well on Linux and is a widely-used platform for

running containers.

For container jobs to run on a self-hosted runner, Docker must be installed and properly configured

on the runner. Docker is required to build and run containerized workloads in a GitHub Actions

workflow.

The GITHUB_TOKEN is automatically provided by GitHub in workflows and can be used to

authenticate API requests to GitHub, including publishing packages to GitHub Packages.

The GITHUB_TOKEN is also used to authenticate API requests for actions like creating issues,

commenting, or interacting with pull requests within the same repository.