Private Composite Action cannot checkout current Repository

[rethab]

When a private composite action that checks out the current repository is checked out and then run, it always fails.

In other words: Composite actions don't work well together with private actions.

Reproducer

• https://github.com/rethab/composite-action-user

Describe the Bug

When using private actions, it is common to use the checkout action (uses: action/checkout@v2 & specify repository) and then use uses: ./ to trigger them. I'm not aware of a better way to trigger private actions, but please enlighten me if I'm missing something (other than github/roadmap#74).

When this private action happens to be a composite action that checks out itself (by using the checkout action w/o any parameters), then that clears the entire current directory.

While having the entire current directory cleared may be okay for the workflow itself, the "Post" step of the outer workflow expects the action.yml to be present, but that will have been deleted as well.

Error message:

Error: Can't find 'action.yml', 'action.yaml' or 'Dockerfile' under '/home/runner/work/composite-action-user/composite-action-user/.actions/composite'. Did you forget to run actions/checkout before running your local action?

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Checkout a composite action
   • Make sure the composite action includes a uses: actions/checkout@v2
2. Trigger the (now local) action like so uses: path-to-my-action
3. The Post step is going to error

Expected behavior
Would be nice if this was somehow possible. Or if passing a working directory to uses would be possible :)

Runner Version and Platform

2.280.3

Ubuntu / self-hosted

@thboop since you wanted to be tagged for issues with composite actions :)

[jgournet]

I know that adding "I'm having the same issue" is not constructive, but it would be nice if someone could tackle this - just to avoid having to use workarounds

[KyleKotowick]

I was having this issue as well, but found a solution. I believe the problem is that when you use actions/checkout@v2, it checks out the files to the current directory. After your composite action steps are finished, it runs the POST step for actions/checkout@v2, which seems to delete all of the files in the directory where the repository was originally checked out to. Since this defaults to the base directory of the action, where your action.yml file is, it will also delete the action.yml file. Now that action.yml has been deleted, the POST step of the composite action will fail with the message saying it can't find action.yml.

The solution is to specify a directory to checkout to (for the actions/checkout@v2 within the composite action), and then reference that directory for subsequent steps (using the working-directory parameter or whatever else is relevant):

name: 'Composite Test'
description: 'Composite Test'

inputs: {}

runs:
    using: "composite"
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Current Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        path: ./source-repo/

      - name: Demo Step
        working-directory: ./source-repo/
        run: ls .
        shell: bash

[thboop]

This is working by design in the actions/runner, but I can understand that this interaction of features can be particularly frusturating.

When github/roadmap#74 ships, this issue should go away.

For now, there's a workaround here

And you may want to follow up with the maintainers at actions/checkout to see if they can expose a flag to not delete the directory in the post step, to avoid this scenario.

With that in mind, I'm going to close out this issue, but thank you for the report!

[marcellodesales]

🐞 Bug on suggestion

@thboop @KyleKotowick

• The correct syntax needs with object for the suggestion at Private Composite Action cannot checkout current Repository #1300 (comment)

    - name: Checkout Current Repository
      uses: checkout/checkout@v2
      with:
        path: ./source-repo/

[sparr]

@thboop Can we get an update on why github/roadmap#74 did not address this issue? Is there a new milestone or ETA, and/or can we get this issue re-opened?