Full site build pipeline in GitHub Actions, replacing a-frobot

[vincentfretin]

Configuration required (for repo owner)

1. Create a fine-grained Personal Access Token (PAT)

   • Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens?type=beta
   • Create a token scoped to the aframevr/aframevr.github.io repository
   • Grant "Actions: Read and write" permission (under Repository permissions)
   • This is the minimum permission needed to trigger repository_dispatch

2. Add the PAT as a secret in aframevr/aframe-site

   • Go to https://github.com/aframevr/aframe-site/settings/secrets/actions
   • Create a new repository secret named DEPLOY_PAT with the PAT value

3. Add the same PAT as a secret in aframevr/aframe

   • Go to https://github.com/aframevr/aframe/settings/secrets/actions
   • Create a new repository secret named DEPLOY_PAT with the same PAT value

4. Merge the companion PRs

   • aframevr/aframe-site: Add trigger-deploy workflow for site deployment aframe-site#562
   • aframevr/aframe: Add trigger-deploy workflow for docs changes aframe#5812

5. Verify GitHub Pages is configured in aframevr/aframevr.github.io

   • Go to Settings > Pages
   • Source should be set to "GitHub Actions" (not "Deploy from a branch")

You can skip reading from here.

Current flow (a-frobot on AWS)

1. A push to aframevr/aframe-site or aframevr/aframe master triggers a webhook
2. The webhook hits a-frobot, a Node.js bot running on an AWS EC2 instance (supermedium/a-frobot)
3. a-frobot pulls the latest aframe-site, runs npm run bumpdocs and npm run generate
   • bumpdocs clears the npm cache for the latest versioned docs branch (docs-v1.7.0),
     removes the local multidep copy, reinstalls aframe from master, then runs installdocs
   • installdocs runs multidep multidep.json to download all versioned docs (0.1.0 to 1.7.0)
     from their respective docs-v* branches, then copies them into src/docs/
   • generate runs hexo clean + hexo generate to produce the static site in public/
4. a-frobot copies public/* into the local aframevr.github.io clone, commits, and pushes to master
5. That push triggers the deploy-pages.yml GitHub Actions workflow in aframevr.github.io
   which runs Pagefind on the static files and deploys to GitHub Pages

New flow (GitHub Actions only, no AWS)

1. A push to aframevr/aframe-site master or aframevr/aframe master (docs/ path only)
   triggers a trigger-deploy.yml workflow in that repo
2. That workflow sends a repository_dispatch event (type: deploy) to aframevr/aframevr.github.io
3. The deploy-pages.yml workflow in aframevr.github.io runs the full build:
   • Checks out aframevr/aframe-site
   • Installs dependencies
   • Runs npm run bumpdocs (fetches fresh docs from aframe master + all versioned branches)
   • Runs npm run generate (hexo build)
   • Runs Pagefind to generate the search index
   • Deploys to GitHub Pages via actions/deploy-pages

This eliminates the AWS EC2 instance and the a-frobot bot entirely for site deployment.

Changes in this PR

• Updated deploy-pages.yml to include the full build pipeline:
  • Added repository_dispatch trigger (type: deploy) and workflow_dispatch for manual triggers from the GitHub Actions UI
  • Checks out aframevr/aframe-site instead of the current repo
  • Installs Node.js dependencies
  • Runs npm run bumpdocs to fetch fresh docs from all aframe branches
  • Runs npm run generate to build the static site with hexo
  • Runs Pagefind on the generated aframe-site/public directory
  • Deploys aframe-site/public to GitHub Pages