Create From Template Initial Workflow Fails with paths-ignore

[andrewhaller]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Configuration

Discussion Details

Problem

When creating a new repo from a template that contains a workflow with on:push and paths-ignore, the initial run of that workflow fails (in the newly created repo) with an Unnamed workflow error.

This is new behavior (introduced within the last week), and fully reproducible.

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Workflow example:

# This workflow's initial run fails in the new repo

name: CI

on:
  push:
    paths-ignore:
      - 'README.md'

  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  debug:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6

If paths-ignore is omitted, the workflow doesn't fail.

Screenshot 3

Screenshot 4

Workflow example:

# This workflow's initial run succeeds in new repo

name: CI

on:
  push:

  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  debug:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6

Additional Details

This is only a problem when creating a repo from a template, within an organization:

If creating a new repository from a template with the destination being a personal account, the problem does not occur:

Working Examples

I've created a new sandbox organization (to rule out permissions issues), with some repository templates to demo this behavior.

• template-test-01: Contains the on:push workflow which will fail if used to create a new repo within the same or another organization.

• template-test-02: Contains the on:push workflow which will succeed if used to create a new repo within the same or another organization.

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[Amitabh-Phule]

Hi,

Thank you for the detailed investigation and reproducible examples. The fact that you've narrowed it down to:

• Repositories created from a template
• Organization-owned destination repositories
• Workflows containing on.push.paths-ignore

is extremely helpful.

Based on the behavior you've described, this does not appear to be a workflow syntax issue, since the same workflow:

• Runs successfully in existing repositories
• Works correctly when the destination is a personal account
• Succeeds when paths-ignore is removed

This suggests the problem may be related to how the initial workflow run is evaluated during repository creation from a template, specifically when path filtering is involved.

A few additional tests that may help further isolate the issue:

1. Replace paths-ignore with paths and see whether the initial run behaves differently.

2. Test with a different ignored file pattern (for example, a nested path rather than README.md) to determine whether the issue is specific to root-level files.

3. Compare the event payloads between:

   • A successful template-created repository
   • A failing template-created repository

   There may be differences in the files or commit information available during the first push event.

4. Check whether the issue occurs consistently across different organizations, or only when the template and destination repositories belong to the same organization.

Given that this behavior reportedly started within the last week and is fully reproducible, it does seem consistent with a platform regression rather than a repository configuration problem.

Hopefully a GitHub team member can take a look at the interaction between template repository provisioning and paths-ignore evaluation during the initial workflow run.

Thanks again for providing such clear reproduction steps—they make this issue much easier to investigate.

[andrewhaller]

Since the initial creation of template-test-01 last night (link is the initial state of ci.yaml), GitHub has introduced additional breaking regressions.

Now, creating an identical repo called template-test-05 produces the same workflow failure I identified above on initial repo create (not creating from a template, just creating a repo manually).

Last night, this behavior was only happening in the situation I described when creating from a template (you can see the timing and status of the initial commit workflow), however now the behavior happens when creating a new repo manually.

In regards to trying nested paths with paths-ignore, I tried that and it resulted in the same error upon initial commit (no live example).

In regards to trying paths instead of paths-ignore, that on:push workflow also initially fails with the same error: template-test-06

We are witnessing BREAKING regressions actively taking place. GitHub, PLEASE address this issue immediately.

[thyeggman]

@andrewhaller Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We did introduce some new behavior here but I will turn it off for stairwaytowonderland-sandbox and investigate what's happening for this scenario. Let me know if there are other orgs you need it turned off for.

[andrewhaller]

@thyeggman thank you for taking the time to give this some attention. Can you please disable the "new behavior" for the stairwaytowonderland organization as well? Also, if it's possible to share, is there any accompanying documentation for the new behavior you're referring to?

[thyeggman]

I disabled the new behavior for stairwaytowonderland as well. There's no docs yet, but effectively we're trying to improve the performance when generating filters for filtered workflows, which has caused problems for repos with exceptionally large histories. We fail open when we can't generate a diff to ensure that workflows run, but this leads to running more than intended sometimes - see the note in our existing docs in this section. We will be updating the docs when we have all the wrinkles like this ironed out though 👍

[andrewhaller]

Thank you again for your quick reply, and disabling the behavior in my orgs.

It would be nice if these sorts of things were released with feature flags that required explicit enabling in the Feature Previews area, while the wrinkles get ironed out.

My current problem is solved though, so thank you again. 🙏