Does Ruby on Rails Work With GitHub Actions?

Fully CompatibleLast verified: 2026-02-20

Ruby on Rails works seamlessly with GitHub Actions for CI/CD, making it trivial to automate testing, linting, and deployment workflows directly from your repository.

Quick Facts

Compatibility

full

Setup Difficulty

Easy

Official Integration

No — community maintained

Confidence

high

Minimum Versions

Ruby on Rails: 5.0

How Ruby on Rails Works With GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions integrates perfectly with Rails projects because Rails provides excellent testing infrastructure out-of-the-box (RSpec, Minitest) that Actions can execute in workflow jobs. You define YAML workflows that run on push/PR events, execute Rails test suites, lint code with RuboCop, check security with Bundler Audit, and deploy to production. The developer experience is exceptional—no additional tools or accounts needed beyond GitHub itself. Rails' Gemfile/Gemfile.lock approach pairs naturally with Actions' caching layer, allowing workflows to skip dependency installation on cache hits. Most workflows follow a standard pattern: checkout code, setup Ruby (via actions/setup-ruby), install gems, run tests, and optionally deploy. The architecture is stateless and containerized, so you avoid environment drift issues. Database-dependent tests work smoothly with service containers (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis) defined directly in workflow YAML.

Best Use Cases

→Run full test suite on every pull request with parallel job matrices across Ruby versions

→Automated security scanning with Bundler Audit and Brakeman on each commit

→Deploy staging/production automatically on tag pushes or manual workflow dispatch

→Schedule database backup checks and health monitoring jobs daily

Basic Rails Test Workflow with GitHub Actions

bash

No installation needed—create .github/workflows/test.yml in your repository

yaml

name: Rails Tests

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    services:
      postgres:
        image: postgres:15
        env:
          POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
        options: >-
          --health-cmd pg_isready
          --health-interval 10s
          --health-timeout 5s
          --health-retries 5
        ports:
          - 5432:5432
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
        with:
          ruby-version: '3.2'
          bundler-cache: true
      - run: bundle exec rails db:test:prepare
      - run: bundle exec rspec
      - run: bundle exec rubocop

Known Issues & Gotchas

critical

Database migrations fail in tests because test database isn't created by default

Fix: Add 'rails db:test:prepare' step before running tests, or configure GitHub Actions service containers with proper credentials

warning

Bundler installs dev/test gems unnecessarily during deployment workflows, slowing builds

Fix: Use 'bundle install --without development test' or 'bundle config set without development:test' in production deployment jobs

warning

Secrets (API keys, database passwords) are visible in logs if not handled carefully

Fix: Use GitHub repository secrets and reference them as environment variables; GitHub automatically masks secret values in logs

info

Rails assets precompilation takes time in CI, delaying deployments

Fix: Cache node_modules and precompiled assets between runs using actions/cache@v3

Alternatives

•CircleCI—dedicated CI/CD platform with excellent Rails support and generous free tier
•GitLab CI/CD—similar YAML-based approach, integrated into GitLab repositories
•Jenkins—self-hosted option for teams needing ultimate control over infrastructure

Resources

docsGitHub Actions documentation githubRuby setup action docsRails testing guide tutorialGitHub Actions with Rails tutorial

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