Currently tagged as 'v1beta'. It does work quite well, but it was tested in a limited environment. Please be aware that issues could come up.

An action for Hugo websites. Build your site from whichever repo branch you choose and deploy to a GH-Pages repo. This action supports deploying to the main site repo or to a repo submodule. No extra work is needed for submodule deploys. It's intended use is to simply automate Hugo site builds.

As with any Github Action, you must include it in a workflow for your repo to run. Place the workflow at .github/workflows/my-build-workflow.yaml in the default repo branch. For more help, see Github Actions documentation.

This action does not include the checkout step. For this, I used the actions/checkout action. A token or SSH is needed for checking out private repos. See my example workflow below for details.

• deploy_directory -> Where you expect Hugo to output your build. Hugo builds default to 'public', but if you change that location you need to set it here. This input also checks if your deploy directory points to a submodule (no extra work needed).

• build_branch -> The branch to build from in the main project.

• deploy_branch -> The branch to deploy the build output to. This only used if deploying to a specific branch on a submodule. Otherwise, it defaults to 'main'.

• fresh_build -> Clears out the specified deploy directory before running the hugo build (ignores do_not_delete_files).

• do_not_delete_files -> Treat this as a single string where each file or directory you wish to save is separated by a space. Include file extensions. These files are always ignored -- '. .. .git CNAME'

• hugo_build_options -> behaves the same as normal hugo build options

• commit_message -> appends a custom commit message to the default - 'auto-build and deploy #??'

Right now, the main.js script only exists to execute build-deploy.sh. It's possible that future updates may add functionality. After checking out the repos and any submodules, the shell script does the following:

1. Set the git user and email config.
2. Check if you intend to deploy to a submodule or not (it's a pretty smart script).
3. Make sure the correct build and deploy branches are checked out.
4. Set the auto-build number and commit message.
5. Clear the deploy folder if fresh_build is set to true (skips items in do_not_delete_files).
6. Run hugo command with any options you set.
7. git push to deploy to the main project repo and/or the deploy submodule.

• The action pushes to the project repo to update any locally changed files including generated assets, which may shorten future build times. I am considering building and pushing to a new branch to avoid modifying the build branch in any way, but so far there seems to be no specific need for this.
• The action will exit quietly if there is nothing new to build (i.e. no changes in git status, no changes to commit).

And now your changes are live!

deploying to a 'live' site with default settings:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron:  '0 7 * * 1,4'
    scheduled at 07:00 every Monday and Thursday

jobs:
  build_and_deploy_hugo_site:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Build and deploy Hugo site

    steps:
    # required: checkout your project repo first, submodules optional, token or SSH required for private repos
    - name: Checkout repo with submodules (theme and public)
      uses: actions/checkout@v2
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.MY_GH_SECRET }}
        submodules: 'recursive'
    
    # required: install Hugo
    - name: Setup Hugo
      uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
      with:
        hugo-version: '0.74.3'
    
    - name: Build site with options and push to public deploy repo
      uses: aormsby/hugo-deploy-to-pages@v1beta
      with:
        # deploy_directory: 'public'
        # build_branch: 'master'
        # deploy_branch: 'master'
        fresh_build: true
        do_not_delete_files: 'testfile.txt myfolder'
        hugo_build_options: '--minify --ignoreCache'
        commit_message: 'I like big builds, and I cannot lie.'
        
    # a handy timestamp printout
    - name: Timestamp
      run: date

alternatively, if you want to build and deploy to a different output folder on a dev branch:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron:  '0 7 * * 1,4'
    scheduled at 07:00 every Monday and Thursday

jobs:
  build_and_deploy_hugo_site:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Build and deploy Hugo site

    steps:
    # required: checkout your project repo first, submodules optional, token or SSH required for private repos
    - name: Checkout repo with submodules (theme and public)
      uses: actions/checkout@v2
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.MY_GH_SECRET }}
        submodules: 'recursive'
    
    # required: install Hugo
    - name: Setup Hugo
      uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
      with:
        hugo-version: '0.74.3'
    
    - name: Build site with options and push to public deploy repo
      uses: aormsby/hugo-deploy-to-pages@v1beta
      with:
        deploy_directory: 'documents'
        build_branch: 'dev'   # note: these do not have to match
        deploy_branch: 'dev'
        hugo_build_options: '--buildDrafts'
        commit_message: 'I like dev builds, and I cannot lie.'
        
    # a handy timestamp printout
    - name: Timestamp
      run: date