Exiting with exit code 1, no warnings, no errors when executed on GitHub Action

[fbramato]

Describe the bug
Doxygen is executed and exits immediately, no warnings, no errors.

Screenshots

To Reproduce
I'm running a Github Action Workflow

# Simple workflow for deploying static content to GitHub Pages
name: Deploy static content to Pages

on:
  # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch: {}

# Sets permissions of the GITHUB_TOKEN to allow deployment to GitHub Pages
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

# Allow only one concurrent deployment, skipping runs queued between the run in-progress and latest queued.
# However, do NOT cancel in-progress runs as we want to allow these production deployments to complete.
concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  # Single deploy job since we're just deploying
  build-and-deploy:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Install Doxygen
        uses: ssciwr/doxygen-install@v1
        
      - name: Setup PHP with PECL extension
        uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
        with:
          php-version: "7.4"
          tools: composer

      - name: Setup Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
    
      - name: NPM install
        run: npm install

      - name: Composer install
        run: composer install

      - name: Run Doxygen
        run: |
          doxygen bvi106php-r01BackEnd.Doxyfile
          doxygen bvi106vue-r01FrontEnd.Doxyfile

Expected behavior
Should run and creates the documentation.

Version
1.10
Tested on ubuntu-latest and windows-latest on Github Workflow, and via act (https://github.com/nektos/act) locally

Stack trace
None

Additional context
Tested the same Doxyfile on Windows 11 and WSL, it works, generate correctly the documentation portal as expected.

[albert-github]

From the description it is not possible to see what the problem is.
First steps are to show the bvi106php-r01BackEnd.Doxyfile and run again without QUIET = YES (I assume this is in the file bvi106php-r01BackEnd.Doxyfile) but with QUIET = NO so we have an idea where the problem lies (an publish this full result.
When the line WARN_LOGFILE is set to a file also disable this line.

What do you mean with:

and via act (https://github.com/nektos/act) locally

as I don't see a Doxyfile or something similar.

[fbramato]

act is a tool for developing Github Workflow without pushing to remote, fundamentally executes the workflow locally using your docker as it would be excuted on GH, with some exceptions,

the Doxyfile was already with QUIET = NO.

But, after scratching my head for 2 days, i've found the reason:
HTML_OUTPUT was set to ./dist/backend but dist folder was not created when the workflow is executed because gitignored.

Creating the dist folder in the GH Workflow before running the doxygen command, it works and fires only a warning about not having dist/backend "but i will create it for you"

So seems the crash is due to not having the parent folder where the documentation should be created.

[albert-github]

So the background actually is that there is no warning on the console but this is probably in the WARN_LOGFILE.

I think this problem is related to the proposed pull request #8444

(as such reopening the issue).

[doxygen]

@albert-github There should be a warning of course when exiting with code 1. But creating whole paths recursively as suggested in #8444 I find rather dangerous. A small mistake (think of an environment variable used in the path which is not set correctly) might put the documentation somewhere it should not be, requiring the user to go clean up the mess.

[albert-github]

@doxygen

The warning is present, but probably hidden in the file indicated by WARN_LOGFILE (I see the message in my console window when not using the setting or in the file when using the setting). @fbramato didn't confirm that he used WARN_LOGFILE.

It is definitely the case when automatically creating a tree of directories this can lead to have the directory at an unexpected place.
@doxygen so (please confirm so it can be done):

• we should close this issue
• close Automatically create multi-layer subdirectories #8444 as not to be integrated with a reasoning like "A small mistake (think of an environment variable used in the path which is not set correctly) might put the documentation somewhere it should not be, requiring the user to go clean up the mess"

[albert-github]

Some more thoughts:

Maybe when having an exit in the middle of the doxygen program (like for the OUTPUT_DIRECTORY we should not use the constructs like:

        err("tag OUTPUT_DIRECTORY: Output directory '%s' does not "
            "exist and cannot be created\n",qPrint(outputDirectory));
        cleanUpDoxygen();
        exit(1);

but use

        term("tag OUTPUT_DIRECTORY: Output directory '%s' does not "
            "exist and cannot be created\n",qPrint(outputDirectory));

and extend the term_ (in message.cpp) so the warning is not only written to the WARN_LOGFILE but when this is set also to stderr.

Another possibility would be to write to stderr (whenWARN_LOGFILE is set something like "Please consult ... file for the reason".

[doxygen]

@albert-github I like the idea of using term instead of exit then always writing a message (which can be a reference to the log file).

[albert-github]

@doxygen

Indeed I like the usage of term as well.
Will you implement it or should I do it?