GitHub Actions - share services across jobs - ruby-on-rails

Question

I would like to know how I can share service containers between jobs in GitHub Actions. With this workflow currently the containers get destroyed after the build step.
on:
push:
branches: [ main ]
pull_request:
branches: [ main ]
env:
RAILS_ENV: test
RACK_ENV: test
RAILS_MASTER_KEY: ${{ secrets.RAILS_MASTER_KEY }}
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres15
POSTGRES_USERNAME: postgres
POSTGRES_HOST: localhost
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout#v3
- name: Initialize Ruby
uses: ruby/setup-ruby#v1
with:
bundler-cache: true
- name: Setup Rails
run: bin/setup
services:
postgres:
image: postgres:15.1-alpine
ports:
- 5432:5432
env:
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${{ env.POSTGRES_PASSWORD }}
POSTGRES_USER: ${{ env.POSTGRES_USERNAME }}
# needed because the postgres container does not provide a healthcheck
options: >-
--health-cmd pg_isready
--health-interval 10s
--health-timeout 5s
--health-retries 5
test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
needs: [ build ]
steps:
- name: Lint Ruby
run: bundle exec rubocop
- name: Run tests
run: bin/rails test:all
coverage:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
needs: [ build, test ]
steps:
- uses: joshmfrankel/simplecov-check-action#main
with:
minimum_suite_coverage: 98
minimum_file_coverage: 90
github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
check_job_name: coverage

Answer 1

As per the documentation, you cannot share service containers across jobs.
https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-containerized-services/about-service-containers
You can configure service containers for each job in a workflow. GitHub creates a fresh Docker container for each service configured in the workflow, and destroys the service container when the job completes. Steps in a job can communicate with all service containers that are part of the same job. However, you cannot create and use service containers inside a composite action.