Why does this action not cause an endless loop?

[preritdas]

The workflow I've created is trigged on push. Because the git-auto-commit action (the final step of my workflow job) is pushing new files to my repository, I would expect it to cause an endless recursive loop of triggering the same workflow, as pushing causes a workflow that pushes, etc.

I'm hoping someone can please explain why this doesn't happen in practice. I'm a bit of a newbie to GitHub Actions and workflows so I appreciate it in advance!

[stefanzweifel]

Good question which isn't obvious if you're just getting started with Actions.

To push the generated commit to GitHub, this Action uses the so called "GITHUB_TOKEN". The token is used to authenticate with GitHub's APIs and allows this Action to push a commit to your repository.

When this Action pushes the commit to GitHub the push-event is triggered. However, if the event has been triggered with the GITHUB_TOKEN no further workflow run is triggered. Thus preventing an endless loop.

GitHub basically built in a failsafe, so you don't accidentally trigger a loop and burn through your Action minutes.

We've also mentioned this in the README here. (You can disable this protection by using your own access token)

[preritdas]

Thanks a ton for the thorough and thoughtful response! I should have read the full README before asking this question. Appreciate you!

[stefanzweifel]

The README is way too long and contains so much information. It's easy to miss such details. :)