MAA leverages GitHub Actions to complete a large amount of automation work, including website building, automatic resource updates, final file building and release processes, etc. Over time, these CI workflows have gradually become nested, with some even pointing to other repositories. This document aims to provide a brief introduction for those who want to improve MAA's CI system.

Before reading this document, it's best to have a basic understanding of MAA's project structure and components.

Tips

You can quickly navigate to the section you want to see by searching for CI file names within this page

Workflow files are all stored under .github/workflows, and each file can be categorized into the following functional parts:

• Code Testing
• Code Building
• Code Security Scanning
• Version Release
• Resource Updates
• Website Building
• Issues Management
• Pull Requests Management
• MirrorChyan Related
• Others

Additionally, we use pre-commit.ci to implement automatic code formatting and image resource optimization, which runs automatically after creating PRs and generally requires no special attention.

GitHub Actions Section

Code Testing

smoke-testing.yml

This workflow is mainly responsible for basic testing of MaaCore, including resource file loading, simple task execution tests, etc.

Since test cases haven't been updated for a long time, this workflow is now basically used to ensure resource files don't contain errors and that MaaCore code doesn't have fatal errors (the kind that affects building).

Code Building

ci.yml

This workflow is responsible for full code building work, including all MAA components. The build artifacts are runnable MAA instances.

In addition to the necessary MaaCore, Windows build artifacts include MaaWpfGui, macOS build artifacts include MaaMacGui, and Linux build artifacts include MaaCLI.

This workflow runs automatically on any new commit and PR. When triggered by a release PR, the build artifacts from this run will be used directly for release and will create a Release.

Code Security Scanning

Code security scanning uses CodeQL to analyze code and workflows for security vulnerabilities, with the following workflows:

codeql-core.yml

This workflow performs security analysis on the C++ and C# code of MaaCore and MaaWpfGui, detecting potential security vulnerabilities.

It runs automatically on PRs that modify relevant source code, and also executes daily scheduled checks at 11:45 UTC.

codeql-wf.yml

This workflow performs security analysis on GitHub Actions workflow files themselves, ensuring the security of the CI/CD processes.

It runs automatically on PRs that modify workflow files, and also executes daily scheduled checks at 12:00 UTC.

Version Release

Version release is the necessary operation to publish updates to users, consisting of the following workflows:

• release-nightly-ota.yml Release nightly builds
• release-ota.yml Release stable/beta versions
  • release-preparation.yml Generate changelog and prepare release for stable/beta versions
  • pr-auto-tag.yml Generate tags for stable/beta versions

Tips

The "ota" in the above file names stands for Over-the-Air, which is what we commonly call "incremental update packages". Therefore, MAA's release process actually includes building OTA packages for past versions.

Nightly Builds

release-nightly-ota.yml

This workflow runs automatically at 22:00 UTC daily to ensure nightly build release frequency. Of course, you can also manually release when making changes that need verification.

Note that nightly builds are only released for Windows users; macOS and Linux users cannot receive nightly updates.

Stable/Beta Versions

The release process for these two channels is relatively more complex. We'll explain the role of each workflow by simulating a release process:

1. Create a PR from dev to master branch, and the PR name must be Release v******
2. release-preparation.yml generates a changelog from the most recent stable/beta version to the current version (as a new PR)
3. Manually adjust the changelog and add brief descriptions
4. Merge the PR, triggering pr-auto-tag.yml to create tags and sync branches
5. The Release event triggers release-ota.yml, which builds OTA packages and uploads attachments after tagging master

Resource Updates

This section of workflows is mainly responsible for MAA's resource updates and optimization, with the following specific workflows:

• res-update-game.yml Executes periodically to pull game resources from specified repositories
• sync-resource.yml Syncs resources to the MaaResource repository for resource updates
• optimize-templates.yml Optimizes template image sizes

Website Building

website-workflow.yml

This workflow is mainly responsible for building and publishing MAA's documentation site.

Please note that website publishing is tightly bound to releases. Regular modifications to web components only trigger builds to ensure no errors occur, and actual deployment to GitHub Pages only happens during releases.

Issues Management

issue-checker.yml

Uses regex matching to tag various Issues, categorizing and marking Issue content for easier viewing and management.

issue-checkbox-checker.yml

Uses regex matching to automatically close Issues that check "I have not read carefully". If "I have not read carefully" is not checked, all checkboxes are collapsed.

stale.yml

Checks Bug Issues that have had no activity for more than 90 days, marks them and sends notifications, then closes them after 7 more days if still inactive.

Pull Requests Management

pr-checker.yml

This workflow checks whether commit messages in PRs conform to Conventional Commits and whether they contain merge commits, providing reminders if these conditions are met.

MirrorChyan Related

MirrorChyan is a paid update mirror service, with the following related workflows:

• release-package-distribution.yml Sync update packages to MirrorChyan
• mirrorchyan_release_note.yml Generate MirrorChyan Release Notes

Others

markdown-checker.yml

Responsible for checking all Markdown files in the repository for invalid links.

blame-ignore.yml

Automatically ignores commits with commit messages containing blame ignore to keep repository history clean.

cache-delete.yml

Cleans up related caches after PR merges to save cache usage.

update-submodules.yml

Periodically updates submodules such as MaaMacGui and maa-cli to their latest versions. This workflow runs automatically at 21:50 UTC daily (before the nightly release), ensuring submodules remain up to date.