Unable to publish to the GitHub Registry

[JamesIves]

I've been following this document (and the README): https://github.community/t5/GitHub-Actions/bd-p/actions, specifically the part about cross publishing between npmjs and the GitHub registry, but I can't seem to get it to work. This is my workflow: https://github.com/JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action/blob/dev/.github/workflows/publish.yml

The problem I'm having is that every time I publish it says I must authenticate, except it's providing a URL related to the npmjs registry: 401 Unauthorized - PUT https://registry.npmjs.org/github-pages-deploy-action - You must be logged in to publish packages.

This is the full log. Am I missing something here or is this a bug?

[jasonkarns]

Same issue:

npm notice 
55
npm ERR! code E401
56
npm ERR! 401 Unauthorized - PUT https://registry.npmjs.org/@nodenv%2fnodenv - You must be logged in to publish packages.

with following workflow :

npm:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
      - run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPMJS_TOKEN }}

I think it's a bug (or their docs are wrong).

[JamesIves]

Interesting, npmjs seems to pass for me when specifying registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org', but only the GitHub registry seems to fail for me. I'm guessing that whatever mechanism that overrides the .npmrc file isn't behaving correctly in my case.

[JamesIves]

@jasonkarns Were you able to get this to work for yourself?

[jasonkarns]

@JamesIves I needed to explicitly provide the scope and registry-url inputs to the action. Rather frustrating limitation at present, IMO. the scope is redundant information (it's in the package name), and the registry should either default to npm and/or respect the publishConfig setting in package.json. But at least it's working :/

[JamesIves]

Interesting, I can't seem to get it to work for the life of me. Tried in several repositories now, the first publish to npmjs.org works. It goes wrong when I try and specify anything besides npmjs. I've even try separating this into separate steps incase there's some form of conflict or permission issue.

   # Setup .npmrc file to publish to npm
    - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
      with:
        node-version: 12
        registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org'

    - name: Configure git
      run: |
        git config user.email "iam@jamesiv.es"
        git config user.name "James Ives"
    - run: npm install
    - run: npm run-script build
    - run: npm version patch -m "Release %s 📣"
    - run: git push
    - run: npm ci

    # Publish to npm
    - run: npm publish --access public
      env:
        NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

    # Setup .npmrc file to publish to GitHub Packages
    - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
      with:
        node-version: 12
        registry-url: 'https://npm.pkg.github.com'
        scope: '@JamesIves'

    # Publish to GitHub Packages
    - run: npm publish
      env:
        NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

However it still doesn't seem to be correctly overwriting the .npmrc file after the second call to setup-node as I get this error (the PUT request is still being made to npmjs.org instead of npm.pkg.github.com)

401 Unauthorized - PUT https://registry.npmjs.org/github-pages-deploy-action - You must be logged in to publish packages.

[petecorreia-appital]

I've got it working by setting ~/.npmrc myself with the following:

      - name: Setup Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: "13.x"
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          echo "//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=$NODE_AUTH_TOKEN" > ~/.npmrc
          npm ci
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}

I also have .npmrc files in a few directories with the correct registries define, for example:

@example:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com

[JamesIves]

I also have .npmrc files in a few directories with the correct registries define, for example:

Can you provide more context to this? Do you have two .npmrc files somehow? I have @JamesIves/package-name defined as the name in my package.json file and I still can't get it to switch from npmjs to github packages. Here's my updated/simplified workflow, for now I've stripped out the step that published to npmjs to see if it was something related to that but it's still trying to default to npmjs as opposed to GitHub:

name: publish-to-npm
on:
  release:
    types: [created]
  push: 
    branches:
      - publish-test
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      with:
        ref: dev

    # Setup .npmrc file to publish to npm
    - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
      with:
        node-version: '13.x'

    - run: echo "//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=$NODE_AUTH_TOKEN" > .npmrc
       env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}

    - run: ls -a

    - name: Configure git
      run: |
        git config user.email "email@gmail.com"
        git config user.name "James Ives"

    - run: npm install
    - run: npm run-script build
    - run: npm ci

    # Publish to GitHub Packages
    - run: npm publish
      env:
        NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}

Running ls -a reveals the .npmrc file is correctly being created at the root. Could there be anything in my branch that is causing this conflict?

[meister]

I also ran into similar issue. But after a bit of debugging, it looks like the .npmrc file for github registry adds @scope, which means if we try to publish a non-scoped package, the authentication fails. You can add

run: cat $NPM_CONFIG_USERCONFIG

to see if it’s the same for you.
Also by looking at the action code (https://github.com/actions/setup-node/blob/master/src/authutil.ts#L25) it looks like for Github registry, the scope is always added.

So not sure if it’s even possible to publish non-scoped packages in Github, if not, then it sort of conflicts with the NPM and can’t publish to both places with the same package.json file, unless a scope is added.

[JamesIves]

By scoping do you mean adding @repoowner/repo-name within the name field package.json or is there a specific scope field I'm not aware of?

[meister]

By scoping do you mean adding @repoowner/repo-name within the name field package.json or is there a specific scope field I'm not aware of?

Yes exactly. Just tried it and it started to work. You can then publish the same thing in NPM as well, as long as you add npm publish —access public. Otherwise scoped packages there are private by default.

[chriskacerguis]

So, I don't know if this applies to your situation or not, but I was having the exact same issue. I came across this doc

https://help.github.com/en/packages/using-github-packages-with-your-projects-ecosystem/configuring-npm-for-use-with-github-packages#publishing-a-package-using-publishconfig-in-the-packagejson-file

I added this to my repo and it worked.

"publishConfig": { "registry": "https://npm.pkg.github.com/" },

Good luck

[meister]

Thanks @chriskacerguis for the info.

But as for me (and it looks like it’s similar to @JamesIves ), I was trying to publish to both NPM and Github.. But I wonder if with the publishConfig, would I still be able to publish to NPM? Or can I then publish to Github without scope?

Either way I renamed my package in NPM with the scope, so that it matches Github, and it started to work.

[JamesIves]

I've added the scope to the package name, and it doesn't seem to run correctly for me. For simplicity I even removed the npm publish part from the action file yet it still tries to go straight to npm.

• Workflow File: https://github.com/JamesIves/fetch-api-data-action/blob/publish-test/.github/workflows/publish.yml

• package.json: https://github.com/JamesIves/fetch-api-data-action/blob/publish-test/package.json#L2

• Workflow Logs: https://github.com/JamesIves/fetch-api-data-action/runs/579411875?check_suite_focus=true