workflow-timer

Workflow-timer is a GitHub action that measures the duration of a workflow and compares it to the duration of historical runs.

The action should be triggered on pull_request hence it will create a comment on the PR with information like:

🕒 Workflow "Unit tests" took 22.056s which is a decrease with 6.944s (23.94%) compared to latest run on main.

The purpose of this action is to make the developer aware of when feedbacks loops get longer. Let's say that you are running unit tests as part of your current workflow. If merging your changes (your PR) would increase the time it takes to run the unit tests by 50%, your changes probably have unwanted side effects. It's about creating awareness for the developer.

How to use it

As the very last job in your workflow, add

- name: Time reporter
  uses: DeviesDevelopment/[email protected]

Workflow-timer compares the current workflow run with the latest run on another branch (typically your default branch). Therefore, the same workflow needs to run when merging with that other branch as well, otherwise, there will be no data to compare. We suggest having the following definition in the workflow:

on:
  push:
    branches: main
  pull_request:
    branches: main

If workflow-timer is used in a private repository, additional permissions are required. Add the following permissions to the workflow:

permissions:
  actions: read
  pull-requests: write

Setting a custom branch to compare with

If you use a different branch than main as your default branch, you can specify what branch to compare with.

- name: Time reporter
  uses: DeviesDevelopment/[email protected]
  with:
    compareBranch: 'your-branch-name'

Setting a percentage threshold

To avoid comment spam, you can set a minimum percentage change required before a comment is posted.

- name: Time reporter
  uses: DeviesDevelopment/[email protected]
  with:
    percentageThreshold: 10

With percentageThreshold: 10, comments will only be posted when the workflow duration changes by 10% or more. If a previous comment exists and the threshold is no longer met, the comment will be automatically deleted.

How to contribute

Feel free to open a pull request! All contributions, no matter how small, are more than welcome. Happy hacking!