Error exit when DEFAULT_BRANCH is empty, despite BRANCH_HISTORY being set to last

[vancejc-mt]

Hello,

It looks like #235 introduced an issue for us (as mentioned in the PR) - in our case, we have BRANCH_HISTORY set to last, but it's still erroring out due to DEFAULT_BRANCH being empty.

While theoretically DEFAULT_BRANCH should not be empty (looks like there's an issue with the symbolic-ref in our remote pointing to a non-existent branch (thanks main/master)), the fact that we're using BRANCH_HISTORY set to last should ignore this exit error altogether - DEFAULT_BRANCH is not used at all if BRANCH_HISTORY is set to last.

Is there a way that we can avoid the DEFAULT_BRANCH check if BRANCH_HISTORY is set to last ?

[sbe-arg]

The quickest fix is to set the env var DEFAULT_BRANCH with whatever is the default branch, main master, other

[sbe-arg]

Can you share the debug logs as well and what merge strategy are you using?

[stefano-elysium]

having the same issue, please fix ASAP

[sbe-arg]

@stefano-elysium can you please share the debug logs. Hard to understand why the var is empty for your use case without logs.

[vancejc-mt]

Agree we can put in the DEFAULT_BRANCH to avoid this (doing so now) but shouldn't technically be necessary with last (I saw your PR go in which should avoid this - awesome thanks!)

Debug logs:

The DEFAULT_BRANCH should be autodetected when tag-action runs on on PRs else must be defined, See: https://github.com/anothrNick/github-tag-action/pull/230, since is not defined we find it natively
fatal: ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD is not a symbolic ref
default_branch=
Error: DEFAULT_BRANCH must not be null, something has gone wrong.

Let me know if I can get you information otherwise.

[vancejc-mt]

Our merge strategy is a little complex; we have main and dev branches which are long lived. Feature branches off of dev are squashed-merged into dev, and when ready to release we do a normal merge to main. Our action only queues on push to main.

[sbe-arg]

Thanks for sharing the merge strategy details.
if you can test 1.61.0 and and report back would be amazing

[vancejc-mt]

Things look like they're working, thanks again

[TobiWo]

Hi @sbe-arg, I also tested the new version but still found some issues:

I always use the rebase and merge pattern with the following workflow trigger:

on:
  pull_request:
    types:
      - closed
    branches:
      - main

1. If I set BRANCH_HISTORY: full and add ref: ${{ github.sha }} to the with property (as suggested in your documentation) I receive a fatal: ambiguous argument error. Here is an example run.
2. If I set BRANCH_HISTORY: full without ref: ${{ github.sha }} in the with property, the commit history is empty so no version bump happens (DEFAULT_BUMP: none). Here is an example run.
3. If I set BRANCH_HISTORY: last without ref: ${{ github.sha }} in the with property (as suggested in your documentation) everything works as expected. Here is an example run.

[sbe-arg]

Whats the problem then? Documentation in the readme?

Cc @sammcj

[TobiWo]

I would say the issue is the documentation (see fatal error) and how the tool works on rebase and merge in general. The full commit history check does not work if I rebase and merge. I didn't test with normal merge commit workflow but I guess as most users use this pattern (I guess you as well) you would have seen many people complaining 🙂.

[sbe-arg]

Mind opening a pr with the readme improvements? @TobiWo

[TobiWo]

Hi @sbe-arg sorry for the super late reply. However, I just want to comment on your request: I'm working on my own open source tool like you guys so I actually do not have time to work here as well (although I really like this action). If I will try to improve the rebase and merge functionality if I can find time and maybe adapt the documentation as requested.