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In this lesson, Alice and her team address GitHub Actions’ artifact retention limits by implementing a long-term storage solution. By adding a dedicated workflow that collects test and coverage reports and syncs them to an Amazon S3 bucket, they ensure indefinite access to CI artifacts.

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Background

Our existing CI pipeline uses two primary jobs:
Job NameArtifact NameDescription
unit-testtest-reportsRuns unit tests and exports JUnit XML
code-coveragecoverage-reportGenerates coverage data (lcov)
Artifacts are retained for up to 90 days and can be no larger than 5 GB each. Syncing reports to S3 immediately after CI avoids expiration and size caps.

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Solution Overview

  1. Extend (or create) a workflow that triggers when the primary CI run completes.
  2. Download the test-reports and coverage-report artifacts.
  3. Use an S3 sync action to upload all reports to your S3 bucket.

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Workflow Configuration

Add a new file at .github/workflows/report-storage.yml: 
name: Store Reports to S3

on:
  workflow_run:
    workflows: ["CI"]
    types: [completed]

jobs:
  upload-reports:
    name: Upload Test & Coverage Reports
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Download Test Reports
        uses: actions/download-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: test-reports
          path: reports/tests

      - name: Download Coverage Reports
        uses: actions/download-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: coverage-report
          path: reports/coverage

      - name: Sync Reports to S3
        uses: jakejarvis/[email protected]
        with:
          args: --acl private --delete
        env:
          AWS_S3_BUCKET: ${{ secrets.S3_BUCKET }}
          AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          AWS_REGION: us-east-1
          SOURCE_DIR: reports/
Make sure you’ve defined the following secrets under Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions:
  • S3_BUCKET
  • AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
  • AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
The workflow_run trigger ensures the upload job only runs after the CI workflow has completed successfully.

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Next Steps

  1. Commit and push report-storage.yml to your repository.
  2. Confirm that unit-test and code-coverage jobs publish artifacts named test-reports and coverage-report.
  3. Trigger your CI workflow and verify the reports/ directory appears in your S3 bucket.
With this setup, Alice’s team will maintain reliable, long-term access to both test results and coverage metrics.

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