Alllow Actions to have post-run steps that run even after an earlier failure

[robtaylor]

Describe the enhancement
For some classes of Action, it would be helpful if the post run Step would be run even if an earlier Step has failed.

The concrete use case I have in mind here is for action/cache - For many classes of cache (e.g. ccache, package installation), you still want to store the cache, even if failure has occurred. This would allow subsequent runs of the step with the issue to fail or success more quickly.

Code Snippet
A possible design here is to add apost-always: key.
e.g.

name: 'Cache'
description: 'Cache artefacts like dependencies and build outputs to improve workflow execution time'
author: 'GitHub'
...
runs:
  using: 'node12'
  main: 'dist/restore/index.js'
  post-always: 'dist/save/index.js'
  post-if: 'success()'
...

This could be implemented in the runner codebase by adding an Always getter to IStep and behaving appropriately in StepsRunner in the case of runner shutdown.

NOTE: if the feature request has been agreed upon then the assignee will create an ADR. See docs/adrs/README.md

[rr-nick-tan]

i'm looking for something similar for Composite Action, i'd like to have Java try/finally logic that i can clean up resources in post-run (aka, finally)

[hross]

This should work already if you provide always() to the post-if condition, like:

runs:
  using: 'node12'
  main: 'dist/restore/index.js'
  post: 'dist/save/index.js'
  post-if: 'always()'

[hross]

Closing since I think this is answered, will re-open if I'm missing something.

[robtaylor]

@hross I'm not sure this works as you want two separate post steps - one that always runs and one that only runs on success.

Does the post step have a way to find out whether the run was successful?

[hross]

@robtaylor I think you can use the step context to check the outcome: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/context-and-expression-syntax-for-github-actions#steps-context