arcade-deploy

A GitHub Action that uploads a game's browser bundle to arcade, the shared host for browser games at <slug>.play.danielstephenson.dev (Stephenson-Software RFC 0006).

It tars the game's index.html, game.zip and version.txt (or, with site-dir, a whole static site) and PUTs them to arcade's API with the game's token. The version deployed is whatever version.txt says, and arcade refuses a version.txt that disagrees with it. Any non-2xx response fails the step with the server's reason, except a 409 when skip-existing is true.

Use

# .github/workflows/deploy.yml in a game's repository
name: Deploy
on:
  push:
    tags: ['v*']
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with: { python-version: '3.12' }
      - run: pip install -r requirements.txt && python3 web/build_zip.py
      - uses: Stephenson-Software/arcade-deploy@v1
        with:
          slug: tidewater
          token: ${{ secrets.ARCADE_TOKEN }}

Before the first deploy, the game needs an entry in the gateway's games.yaml with the token_sha256 of its token, and the token itself as the repository secret ARCADE_TOKEN. The arcade README explains how to mint both.

A static game (pygbag, Emscripten, plain HTML/JS)

For a game registered with kind: static, upload a whole build directory:

      - run: pip install pygbag && python -m pygbag --build src
      - uses: Stephenson-Software/arcade-deploy@v1
        with:
          slug: rock-paper-scissors
          token: ${{ secrets.ARCADE_TOKEN }}
          site-dir: src/build/web

The action writes version.txt into the uploaded tree and dereferences links, which arcade refuses.

Inputs

Input	Default
slug	(required)	the game's slug in games.yaml
token	(required)	the upload token; pass a secret
index	web/index.html	the page
game-zip	web/game.zip	the built bundle
site-dir	(empty)	for a kind: static game, a directory uploaded as the whole site (must hold index.html); index and game-zip are then ignored
version-file	version.txt	its contents are the version
url	https://play.danielstephenson.dev	arcade's API base
activate	true	false stores the version without making it live (promote later with arcade's POST /api/games/<slug>/current)
skip-existing	false	treat "already deployed" (409) as success, for re-run jobs

Outputs: version and url.

Versions are immutable. Re-running a deploy of the same version fails unless skip-existing is true, so a changed game needs a new version.txt.

The token is written to a temporary header file (mode 600), not passed on the command line, and the file is deleted when the step ends.

By hand

deploy.sh runs outside Actions with the same inputs as ARCADE_* variables:

ARCADE_SLUG=tidewater ARCADE_TOKEN="$(cat token.txt)" ./deploy.sh

Tests

CI starts a real arcade from a pinned release on play.localhost and deploys through the action. It covers a first deploy, the game being served, a re-run failing, skip-existing, a wrong token, an empty token, an empty slug, an invalid slug or version, a missing index, game-zip or version-file (with or without site-dir), a site-dir without index.html, an unreachable url, any other non-2xx status, activate: false, and a static site uploaded with site-dir (holding a symlinked file, through a url with a trailing slash). Every successful deploy, including a skip-existing one, is checked for its version and url outputs. The re-run and wrong-token failures are checked for an error saying what to do next, and a skip-existing re-run for its notice.

License

Stephenson Software Non-Commercial License (Stephenson-NC).