Custom Action : unable to find version

[lgmorand]

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Hi

I don't understand anymore how calling version works. I'm pretty sure it worked in the past.

I have a custom action with 3 releases

• v1.0.0 (based on tag v1.0.0)
• v1 (based on tag v1.0.1)
• v2 (based on tag v2.0.0)

If I call the action by the exact tag number, it works perfectly but if I call it by the major version number (v1), it does not work, same goes for v2

And the workflow can't resolve it:
Unable to resolve action lgmorand/github-action-hello@v1, unable to find version v1``

I was expecting that by calling "v2", I would get the last version matching v2, including v2.0.0

What am I missing ?

[airtower-luna]

There's noting automatic, a version will only work if a ref (tag or branch) of the name exists. Some action repositories have branches (or moving tags) for major versions, some do not. If you want e.g. v2 to work, you'll have to create such a ref and make sure it always points to the latest v2.x release.

[MichaelVoelkel]

But I see many repos where I can refer via @v1, it works and they don't have a v1 reference, at least no tag or branch?!
E.g. see https://github.com/dorny/test-reporter
What do I miss?

[airtower-luna]

You missed that that repository actually has a v1 branch: https://github.com/dorny/test-reporter/tree/v1 Maybe you didn't look at the "stale" branches? 🙂

[MichaelVoelkel]

Indeed! Stupid me, thank you

[lgmorand]

thanks @airtower-luna

So if I understand you well, if I want people to always use the very "patch" version (i.e. v2.x), I need to update my "tag v2" to point to the last ref ?

This way, they can call myaction@v2 and it would work ?

I'm asking because I thought that tags should be immutable but here, the doc says "move the tag version"

[lgmorand]

This article is pretty clear: https://dev.to/rob_bos/how-github-actions-versioning-system-works-lec

So when you have a current release v4.2.5, you also need to re-tag that commit with the v4.2 tag, as well as the v4 tag. This way the runner can find the correct version to download.

I think I was misguided because even GitHub does not follow best practices for its actions so I thought it would be implicit

[airtower-luna]

I agree it's misguided. 😅

I'd probably make a v2 stable release branch instead of a tag if I wanted to make ...@v2 work, but:

• I'd recommend actually fixing the version (or even commit hash) and letting Depedabot take care of keeping it current. That avoids surprising changes, and potentially even malicious changes: If you review an action and pin the hash, you know it'll be exactly as reviewed, and you can review changes before updating. Where you trust the author using a specific minor version helps find any problems caused by new versions, because you'll know it was updated.
• I haven't checked if the GitHub Marketplace guidelines say anything about it (your action doesn't need to be listed there to be used, but it matters if you want it to be listed).

[lgmorand]

Agree for the hash version but for instance, when they announced the deprecation of NodeJS12, all actions started generating warning and I had to change around 100 workflows. it could have been transparent if everybody use semver properly :)

[airtower-luna]

Oh, that's definitely an annoying situation! That's why I mentioned Dependabot, you'd just have to accept the PRs (okay, 100 is still a lot! 😁). And ideally tests would show you if an update might cause trouble before merging.