GHA

1. Runner
2. Persist Output

Runner

Each GitHub-hosted runner is a new virtual machine (VM) hosted by GitHub with the runner application and other tools preinstalled, and is available with Ubuntu Linux, Windows, or macOS operating systems. When you use a GitHub-hosted runner, machine maintenance and upgrades are taken care of for you.

Each GHA job has its own standalone runner and specifies the types of runners by runs-on.

See more details about runner at Using GitHub-hosted runners.

Persist Output

We can share values among steps of a job, or even among jobs.

1. To share values among steps of a job, please use GITHUB_ENV or GITHUB_OUTPUT.

   1. Output variables GITHUB_OUTPUT is a GHA feature. We can access to such variables only with GHA syntax.

            
      ${{ steps.<step-id>.outputs.my_var }}
            
      

   2. Environment variables GITHUB_ENV is a Shell feature of the runner. We can access to such variables both with Shell syntax or GHA syntax.

            
      $my_var
      
      ${{ env.my_var }}
            
      

      However, in the well-know actions/github-script, we access the environment variables via process.env.my_var.

2. To share values among jobs, please try the following methods.
   1. Storing workflow data as artifacts.
   2. Defining outputs for jobs.