(GitHub Actions) Split step into two consecutive ones - github

Question

I'd like to use GitHub Actions to publish an npm package. So far I am using quite a trivial script to do that. Now I'd like to split one step of the script into two consecutive ones.
here's an excerpt from my workflows/...yaml file:
steps:
# ...
- name: Build
run: |
cd src
npm install
tsc
# TODO split here
npm set registry https://npm.pkg.github.com
npm set //npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
npm publish
env:
CI: true
Now, when I tried to have these as separate Steps, they ran in parallel which is not the behavior I hope for, since the first step yields results (creates a src/lib directory) that I depend on in step #2. (The one where I log into npm and publish this).
Can someone please help me to unravel this?

Answer 1

As #smac89 explains above, steps can't be executed in parallel, only jobs and workflows can.
The official Github Documentation shares this illustration about the Github Actions structure:
What probably happened in your case was that you created 2 jobs instead of 2 steps.
The syntax to split your steps should be something like this:
jobs:
my-job:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest #for example
steps:
# ...
- name: Build
run: |
cd src
npm install
tsc
env:
CI: true
- name: Publish
run: |
npm set registry https://npm.pkg.github.com
npm set //npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
npm publish
env:
CI: true