[GH-ISSUE #5887] Command-line improvements #1276

New issue

Open

opened 2026-03-01 21:50:06 +03:00 by kerem · 0 comments

kerem commented

2026-03-01 21:50:06 +03:00

Owner

Originally created by @reneleonhardt on GitHub (Jul 31, 2025).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/nektos/act/issues/5887

Act version

0.2.79

Feature description

act works beautifully, but only after I tried and found out all necessary params, the result looks quite complicated 😄

act --container-architecture linux/amd64 -P ubuntu-latest=-self-hosted -W .github/workflows/ci.yml -j build

I suggest the following improvements:

As long as there are no multi-architecture runners, act can determine if not running on amd64 and set --container-architecture linux/amd64 if necessary
A new flag --self-hosted replaces all runs-on by -self-hosted (instead of needing to replace all of them manually like macos-13, ubuntu-22.04, ...)
The -W ci option could just check if a file for the value exists (.github/workflows/ci.yml or .github/workflows/ci.yaml)
The -j option could prompt interactively with a multi-select if no value was passed and more than one job exists in the workflow, otherwise just run the single job without prompting (no error for a missing value displayed)
A new --skip publish,release option to only run build and test jobs for example (if -W would be implemented, it could skip workflows too)

Originally created by @reneleonhardt on GitHub (Jul 31, 2025). Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/nektos/act/issues/5887 ### Act version 0.2.79 ### Feature description act works beautifully, but only after I tried and found out all necessary params, the result looks quite complicated 😄 ```shell act --container-architecture linux/amd64 -P ubuntu-latest=-self-hosted -W .github/workflows/ci.yml -j build ``` I suggest the following improvements: - As long as there are no multi-architecture runners, act can determine if not running on amd64 and set `--container-architecture linux/amd64` if necessary - A new flag `--self-hosted` replaces all runs-on by `-self-hosted` (instead of needing to replace all of them manually like `macos-13`, `ubuntu-22.04`, ...) - The `-W ci` option could just check if a file for the value exists (.github/workflows/ci.yml or .github/workflows/ci.yaml) - The `-j` option could prompt interactively with a multi-select if no value was passed and more than one job exists in the workflow, otherwise just run the single job without prompting (no error for a missing value displayed) - A new `--skip publish,release` option to only run build and test jobs for example (if -W would be implemented, it could skip workflows too)

kerem added the

kind/feature-request

label

2026-03-01 21:50:06 +03:00

No milestone

No project

No assignees

1 participant

Notifications

Due date

The due date is invalid or out of range. Please use the format "yyyy-mm-dd".

No due date set.

Dependencies

No dependencies set.

Reference

starred/act#1276

No description provided.

Rows
Columns