How do I prevent GitHub actions from replacing some files - laravel

Question

I want to do a simple CD/CD to do automatic deployments for my Laravel project but turns out my .env file is always replaced. How do I make sure it's not always replaced
Here is my action file
name: Laravel
on:
push:
branches: [ main ]
pull_request:
branches: [ main ]
jobs:
laravel-tests:
runs-on: self-hosted
steps:
- uses: shivammathur/setup-php#b7d1d9c9a92d8d8463ce36d7f60da34d461724f8
with:
php-version: '7.4'
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
- name: Copy .env
run: php -r "file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.example', '.env');"
- name: Install Dependencies
run: composer install -q --no-ansi --no-interaction --no-scripts --no-progress --prefer-dist
- name: Generate key
run: php artisan key:generate
- name: Directory Permissions
run: chmod -R 777 storage bootstrap/cache
- name: Create Database
run: |
mkdir -p database
touch database/database.sqlite
- name: Execute tests (Unit and Feature tests) via PHPUnit
env:
DB_CONNECTION: sqlite
DB_DATABASE: database/database.sqlite
run: vendor/bin/phpunit

Answer 1

Each time your workflow run you will get a new machine. Thus there is no files you created them on previous run. As this if you need to have some file created at runtime you need to repeat this step each time.
Please check it here to understand better github ations basics.
You don't have much options to share this file accros run, as keeping secrets in artifacts is bad choice. So you need to recreate this file each time you need it based on the secret which you may keep in secrets context. Please check this link:
- name: Create env file
run: |
cat << EOF >> .env
API_ENDPOINT="https://xxx.execute-api.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
API_KEY=${{ secrets.API_KEY }}
EOF

Answer 2

The github action works on the files on your git repo.
Your .env is not and should not be in the repo, because it contains your credentials/secrets.
You may have it on your local computer, but it's included in the gitignore so git (an github as a consequence) doesn't track it.
As a consequence no, you don't have the .env file at each action run. The most straightforward way to do it is:
create a .env.production file that is gitted and committed. Place there your main .env variables that aren't secrets/sensitive, such as:
APP_NAME=YourAppName
APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_LOG_LEVEL=warning
APP_URL=https://your-url.com
CACHE_DRIVER=redis
SESSION_DRIVER=file
QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis
... etc ...
DO NOT INCLUDE KEYS, PASSWORDS OR SECRETS THOUGH..
Now copy that file as your default .env file in one of your steps:
- name: Copy .env
run: php -r "file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.production', '.env');"
Now it's time to handle your secrets. You should add them as github secret of your repo, and included using the env directive of your github actions:
env:
APP_KEY: ${{ secrets.APP_KEY }}
DB_PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.DB_PASSWORD }}
....
This last step may need to vary a bit depending on how/where you do the actual deploy, but that should be the gist of it: you pull them from the github secrets space and you add them to the production environment