Publish failing with error not able to read changesets output

[jamiebuilds-signal]

Getting this error on the latest versions of @changesets/cli and the changesets/action when the publish action runs when there are no changesets and all packages are published:

Error: Error: Failed to read changesets output at /home/runner/work/_temp/changesets-output-<uuid>.ndjson

It looks like this error was added in #678 and it expects the publish command to write to CHANGESETS_OUTPUT=<path> but maybe that file does not get written to when there is nothing to publish.

Of note our setup is maybe a bit unique, we have packages/ that get versioned and published via Changesets in the same repo as our app which goes through it's own release system. So most of the commits in the repo do not have an associated changeset to them and it currently causes the action to fail on every commit to main

Versions

• @changesets/cli@2.31.0 (latest)
• changesets/action@c47fa68bd43bb8ae0bae7e558622593deebf5955 (v2.0.0-next.3)

Full Output

$ changeset publish
🦋 info npm info @signalapp/types
🦋 warn @signalapp/types is not being published because version 0.1.1 is already published on npm
🦋 warn No unpublished projects to publish
Error: Error: Failed to read changesets output at /home/runner/work/_temp/changesets-output-3cb84d4d-1ddb-4c08-87b3-8a26475c76cd.ndjson
Error: Failed to read changesets output at /home/runner/work/_temp/changesets-output-3cb84d4d-1ddb-4c08-87b3-8a26475c76cd.ndjson

Relevant Code

// package.json
{
 "scripts": {
 "changeset:version": "changeset version && pnpm install --lockfile-only",
 "changeset:publish": "changeset publish"
 },
 "devDependencies": {
 "@changesets/cli": "2.31.0",
 }
}

// .changeset/config.json
{
 "changelog": [
 "@changesets/cli/changelog",
 {
 "repo": "signalapp/Signal-Desktop",
 "disableThanks": true
 }
 ],
 "commit": false,
 "fixed": [],
 "linked": [],
 "access": "public",
 "baseBranch": "main",
 "updateInternalDependencies": "patch",
 "ignore": [],
 "bumpVersionsWithWorkspaceProtocolOnly": false,
 "changedFilePatterns": ["**"],
 "format": "auto",
 "privatePackages": { "version": false, "tag": false }
}

# .github/workflows/publish-package.yml
name: Publish Packages
on:
 push:
 branches:
 - main

concurrency: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}

jobs:
 publish:
 if: ${{ github.repository == 'signalapp/Signal-Desktop-Private' }}
 name: Publish
 runs-on: ubuntu-latest
 timeout-minutes: 45

 permissions:
 id-token: write # Required for OIDC
 contents: write
 pull-requests: write

 steps:
 - uses: actions/checkout@v7.0.0
 with:
 persist-credentials: false
 fetch-depth: 0
 - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v4
 - uses: actions/setup-node@v4.2.0
 with:
 node-version: '24.17.0'
 registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org/'
 package-manager-cache: false
 - run: pnpm install --frozen-lockfile

 - id: changesets
 uses: changesets/action@c47fa68bd43bb8ae0bae7e558622593deebf5955
 with:
 commit-message: Publish Packages
 pr-title: Publish Packages
 version-script: pnpm changeset:version
 publish-script: pnpm changeset:publish
 create-github-releases: false
 push-git-tags: true
 commit-mode: github-api
 github-token: ${{ secrets.AUTOMATED_GITHUB_PAT }}

[Andarist]

changesets/action@v2 is compatible with @changesets/cli@3. Which reminds me that I wanted to add an explicit compat check in the action to throw a helpful error.

You should either use changesets/action@v1 or @changesets/cli@3. I know it's a little bit confusing that their major versions don't match but this is the compatibility table:

Action	CLI
v1	v2
v2	v3