Automating Model Training Workflows with GitHub Actions

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Automating your model training workflows with GitHub Actions can streamline the process of model experimentation, allowing you to easily test new ideas and integrate machine learning lifecycle management tools. GitHub Actions provides a platform to automate your software workflows, including machine learning CI/CD pipelines, with custom GitHub workflows created in YAML format.

When you're automating model training workflows using GitHub Actions, you generally follow these steps:

1. **Event Trigger**: Decide on an event that will trigger the model training workflow. This can be a push to a specific branch, a pull request, or any other event supported by GitHub Actions.

2. **Environment Setup**: Define the environment needed for training, this includes actions to set up the language environment (like Python), installing dependencies, etc.

3. **Training Script Execution**: Execute the script that trains the model. This could be a simple Python script that loads data, defines the model, trains it, and saves the trained model to a file or artifact storage.

4. **Post-Training Actions**: After training has concluded, perform any post-training steps required by the workflow. This could include evaluating the model, uploading the trained model to artifact storage, notifying users, or deploying the model to a serving environment.

5. **Secrets and Credentials**: Manage any required secrets and credentials safely using the GitHub Secrets feature, allowing you to store sensitive information like API keys or access tokens without exposing them in your repository.

6. **Workflow Definition**: Write the actual workflow file (`main.yml`) that GitHub uses to execute your actions. Within this file, you outline all the steps above and define the specific actions to take.

To demonstrate this, let's create a sample program that sets up an action to train a model whenever code is pushed to the `main` branch of a repository. We'll use the Pulumi GitHub provider to manage GitHub Action Secrets necessary for the workflow, allowing credentials to be provided securely without storing them in the repo.

Here's a Pulumi program written in Python that would help set up such GitHub Action Secrets for this purpose.

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_github as github

# Assuming you have a repository called 'machine-learning-repo'
repo_name = "machine-learning-repo"

# Create a GitHub Actions Secret to store an example API Token
api_token_secret = github.ActionsSecret("api-token-secret",
    repository=repo_name,
    plaintext_value="supersecretapitoken",  # Replace with your real token
    secret_name="API_TOKEN"
)

# Optionally, you can encrypt the value before providing it
# encrypted_value should contain the encrypted value of the secret
# The value can be encrypted for example using the GitHub public key corresponding to the repository

# If you had environment-specific secrets, you could also use ActionsEnvironmentSecret like this:
environment_secret = github.ActionsEnvironmentSecret("environment-secret",
    repository=repo_name,
    environment="staging",
    plaintext_value="environmentSpecificSecret",  # Replace with your real secret
    secret_name="ENV_SECRET"
)

# After setting up the secret, you can refer to these secrets in your GitHub Actions workflow file
# (.github/workflows/main.yml) like so:
#
# jobs:
#   train-model:
#     runs-on: ubuntu-latest
#     steps:
#     - name: Checkout repository
#       uses: actions/checkout@v2
#     - name: Set up Python
#       uses: actions/setup-python@v2
#       with:
#         python-version: '3.8'
#     - name: Install dependencies
#       run: pip install -r requirements.txt
#     - name: Train model
#       run: python train_model.py
#       env:
#         API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.API_TOKEN }}
#         ENV_SECRET: ${{ secrets.ENV_SECRET }}

# Export the secret name and value for reference if needed
pulumi.export("api_token_secret_name", api_token_secret.secret_name)
pulumi.export("environment_secret_name", environment_secret.secret_name)
```

This program sets up two secrets within your GitHub repository: `API_TOKEN` and `ENV_SECRET`. The `API_TOKEN` is a repository secret available to workflows across this repository. The `ENV_SECRET` is an environment secret available to workflows that run in the specified environment (`staging` in this case).

Remember to replace `'supersecretapitoken'` and `'environmentSpecificSecret'` with your actual secrets. Also, never hard-code secrets in your Pulumi program; it's shown here just for illustrative purposes. Always fetch secrets from a secure location or use Pulumi Config to manage them.

For full details on Pulumi's GitHub Actions support, check out the Pulumi GitHub provider [ActionsSecret documentation](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/github/api-docs/actionssecret/) and [ActionsEnvironmentSecret documentation](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/github/api-docs/actionsenvironmentsecret/).