Failing check when I want an informative check

[kaihendry]

I use this action simply:

name: Links

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:

jobs:
  linkChecker:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Link Checker
        uses: lycheeverse/lychee-action@v1
        with:
          args: --verbose --no-progress **/*.mdwn

upon https://github.com/kaihendry/geekout.org.uk/blob/07328724ab98e8fc91105255654b399baa27fe58/.github/workflows/links.yaml

However it has two surprisingly issues:

• it causes a failure, I assumed reading the documentation I needed run: exit ${{ steps.lychee.outputs.exit_code }} to actually cause a failure
• doesn't appear to summarize the failing links in a sane way

What am I doing wrong please?

[mre]

Thanks for trying lychee. 😊

About your questions:

• You are right that the documentation mentioned the explicit propagation of the exit code. This caused some confusion in the past, so we changed it (see Action exit code is not set  #20). The exit code now gets passed unconditionally to the next step. I've updated the docs. To restore the old behavior, you can use continue-on-error on the job level:

  name: Links
  
  on:
    workflow_dispatch:
    push:
  
  jobs:
    linkChecker:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      continue-on-error: true
      steps:
        - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        - name: Link Checker
          uses: lycheeverse/lychee-action@v1
          with:
            args: --verbose --no-progress **/*.mdwn

  See also https://qmacro.org/autodidactics/2020/07/21/continue-on-error/.

• The summary gets written to./lychee/out.md by default (see https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee/blob/6ef121d3eb9a778b073e99732544caade2e40c03/lychee-bin/src/main.rs#L241-L243 and

  lychee-action/entrypoint.sh

  Line 12 in 805f3b2

  lychee --output "$LYCHEE_TMP" "$@"

  ). (The reason why you don't see the rest of the output is that it gets printed to stdout directly (ref: https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee/blob/6ef121d3eb9a778b073e99732544caade2e40c03/lychee-bin/src/main.rs#L142-L145) The idea is that a subsequent step can use this output to create an issue in case of errors. We could bundle the issue creation into the action and provide a flag to bypass the redirection if needed. Something like

  - name: Link Checker
    uses: lycheeverse/lychee-action@v1
    with:
      args: --verbose --no-progress **/*.mdwn
      issue: false

[kaihendry]

Thanks, I applied your change https://github.com/kaihendry/geekout.org.uk/runs/3034419141

Is there a way just to highlight the failing links? I.e. do not show the successful / working links

This would help me prioritize what I should fix first.

And last but not least, is there a sane way to "fix" broken links? Propose to rewrite them to http://web.archive.org/ or https://archive.is/ if the URL is archived upon them?

Thank you again!

[mre]

Is there a way just to highlight the failing links?

Sure, just remove --verbose.

And last but not least, is there a sane way to "fix" broken links? Propose to rewrite them to http://web.archive.org/ or https://archive.is/ if the URL is archived upon them?

I thought this was proposed before, but I can't find the issue anymore. 🤔 It's a great idea, though. We could add a --fix flag that proposes those changes. Could you create a new issue over at https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee to track that?

[mre]

Thanks for creating that ticket @kaihendry.

[kaihendry]

Hi, despite adding continue-on-error: true, I still see:

[Links/linkChecker]   ❌  Failure - Link Checker
Error: exit with `FAILURE`: 2

Is that expected? I rather just have it run and not look like some sort of CI fail, if that makes any sense.

Thank you!

[mre]

I think that's expected, yeah. continue-on-error: true just means that an error will not cancel the entire pipeline. However individual steps can still fail.

[mre]

I haven't tested it, but perhaps you could overwrite the lychee exit code?

- name: Link Checker
  uses: lycheeverse/lychee-action@v1
  with:
    args: --verbose --no-progress **/*.mdwn || exit 0
    issue: false

[kaihendry]

Looks like the pipe gets quoted.... hmm https://github.com/kaihendry/geekout.org.uk/runs/3067535049?check_suite_focus=true

[mre]

We could add an exit field to the action like so:

- name: Link Checker
  uses: lycheeverse/lychee-action@v1
  with:
    args: --verbose --no-progress **/*.mdwn
    issue: false
    exit: 0

Alternatively we could add a flag to lychee:

- name: Link Checker
  uses: lycheeverse/lychee-action@v1
  with:
    args: --verbose --no-progress **/*.mdwn --exit 0
    issue: false

To be honest, these options feel like hacks to me. I wonder if that's a common enough use-case to add that feature. 😕

[kaihendry]

continue-on-error: true in the step works actually, thanks for you help !!

https://github.com/kaihendry/geekout.org.uk/actions/runs/1030628076