github scheduled cron job not triggering every 5 minutes

Question

name: Scheduled Job

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "*/5 * * * *" # Runs every 5 minutes
  push:
    branches:
      - main
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]
    branches:
     - main
  workflow_dispatch: {}

jobs:
  scheduled-job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Print Current Time
        run: echo "The current time is $(date)

The above github actions workflow YAML is not triggering for every 5 minutes when I pushed the feature branch and raise a PR

Please guide me the reason why the CRON job is not triggered?

Answer 1

not triggering for every 5 minutes when I pushed the feature branch and raise a PR

It does not trigger for a feature branch because the documentation clearly states this:

Scheduled workflows run on the latest commit on the default or base branch. The shortest interval you can run scheduled workflows is once every 5 minutes.

This part should for sure trigger for a push to the main branch though:

  push:
    branches:
      - main

and that might be redundant with the whole cron schedule. I'm not sure if a scheduled workflow will trigger for commits that have already been verified on push.

Pull request against the main branch should also automatically trigger without the whole cron part:

  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]
    branches:
     - main

If none of these trigger, first make sure your default branch really is main and and not master. main is the new default at GH, but your local git installation might still use master.

See the documentation for more: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/events-that-trigger-workflows#schedule