[BUG] files_ignore used with files not ignoring as expected

[koshy1123]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Does this issue exist in the latest version?

• I'm using the latest release

Describe the bug?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the capabilities of these two levers, but I used files_ignore and files in conjunction, but the outputs of this action is undesirable for my use case. By using files_ignore, I want to exclude files listed in that section from being considered as "changes", but that's not what's happening.

The closest I could find was this issue: #675 but it looks like that was user error - hoping that's the same here.

To Reproduce

1. Set up a folder structure as so:

.
├── products/
│   ├── gri/
│   │   └── {package code}
│   └── README.md
└── README.md

2. Set up actions as so:

- name: Get changed folders
  id: changed-folders
  uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v35
  with:
    json: "true"
    dir_names: "true"
    dir_names_max_depth: 2
    files_ignore: |
      **/docs/**
      **.md
    files: |
      products/**

3. If I make a change to the file products/README.md and some nested file under products/gri, I expected the output to be a list with one element products/gri, but what I get is a list of two elements: products/gri AND products.

What OS are you seeing the problem on?

ubuntu-latest or ubuntu-20.04

Expected behavior?

I thought by specifying files_ignore: **.md, it wouldn't capture products as a changed directory, since the only change in that directory is the README.md file.

I expected the output to be a list with one element products/gri, but what I get is a list of two elements: products/gri AND products.

Relevant log output

2022-12-29T20:52:51.4277434Z ##[debug]file patterns: packages/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4277736Z ##[debug]products/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4281309Z ##[debug]excluded file patterns: !**/docs/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4281588Z ##[debug]!**.md
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4286486Z ##[debug]file patterns: /home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/packages/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4286925Z ##[debug]/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/products/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4287321Z ##[debug]!/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/**/docs/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4287689Z ##[debug]!/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/**.md
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4288068Z ##[debug]!/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/.git/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4288464Z ##[debug]!/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/**/node_modules/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4288861Z ##[debug]!/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/node_modules/**
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4289741Z ##[debug]followSymbolicLinks 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4290738Z ##[debug]matchDirectories 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4338697Z ##[debug]followSymbolicLinks 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4339489Z ##[debug]implicitDescendants 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4340429Z ##[debug]matchDirectories 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4341159Z ##[debug]omitBrokenSymbolicLinks 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4343934Z ##[debug]Search path '/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/packages'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4357877Z ##[debug]Search path '/home/runner/work/uf-team-data/uf-team-data/products'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4977328Z ##[debug]followSymbolicLinks 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.4982220Z ##[debug]matchDirectories 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.5116826Z ##[debug]followSymbolicLinks 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.5117718Z ##[debug]implicitDescendants 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.5118742Z ##[debug]matchDirectories 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.5119497Z ##[debug]omitBrokenSymbolicLinks 'true'
2022-12-29T20:52:51.6100393Z Retrieving changes between 9dd49cb6d808f9b3fedca3bbe627d2387ac9f1cc (main) → bd70ae13f7a2c353b21424925f025cafff6f38ac (koshy-ignore-md)
2022-12-29T20:52:52.0907419Z ##[debug]Matching changed files: products|products/gri
2022-12-29T20:52:52.1324336Z ##[debug]Non Matching changed files: [\".github/workflows\"]
2022-12-29T20:52:52.1722034Z ##[debug]Matching modified files: products|products/gri
2022-12-29T20:52:52.2126486Z ##[debug]Non Matching modified files: [\".github/workflows\"]
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6510496Z ##[debug]Added files: []
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6551940Z ##[debug]Copied files: []
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6552610Z ##[debug]Deleted files: []
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6553331Z ##[debug]Modified files: [\"products\",\"products/gri\"]
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6554005Z ##[debug]Renamed files: []
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6554639Z ##[debug]Type Changed files: []
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6555246Z ##[debug]Unmerged files: []
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6555861Z ##[debug]Unknown files: []
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6556600Z ##[debug]All changed and modified files: [\"products\",\"products/gri\"]
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6557424Z ##[debug]All changed files: [\"products\",\"products/gri\"]
2022-12-29T20:52:52.6558199Z ##[debug]All modified files: [\"products\",\"products/gri\"]

Anything else?

No response

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[github-actions]

Thanks for reporting this issue, don't forget to star this project if you haven't already to help us reach a wider audience.

[jackton1]

@koshy1123 I believe this can be configured by setting the match-directories input to false

[koshy1123]

Thanks! I'll give it a shot and report back.

[koshy1123]

@jackton1 This isn't quite what I expected, now I get an empty set instead.

My expectation was that products/gri would still be picked up as a change, but with the option match_directories: "false", I just get an empty set. I suspect because it has products/ in it? Unclear to me.

I'll see what else I can do.

EDIT: I realize I should've moved this sentence

I expected the output to be a list with one element products/gri, but what I get is a list of two elements: products/gri AND products.

to the "Expected Behavior" section 🤦

[jackton1]

@koshy1123 In that case I’ll reopen this and double check why it doesn’t work as expected.

[jackton1]

Actually @koshy1123 I believe the bug is with your implementation

Notice you used

- name: Get changed folders
  id: changed-folders
  uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v35
  with:
    json: "true"
    dir_names: "true"
    dir_names_max_depth: 2
    files_ignore: |
      **/docs/**
      **.md
    files: |
      products/**

**.md would only ignore all markdown files in the top level directory as opposed to nested directories to ignore nested directories you'll need to use products/**.md OR **/*.md

- name: Get changed folders
  id: changed-folders
  uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v35
  with:
    json: "true"
    dir_names: "true"
    dir_names_max_depth: 2
    files_ignore: |
      **/docs/**
      **.md
      products/**.md
    files: |
      products/**

Let me know if that resolved the issue.

For more information on this see: #795 (comment)

[koshy1123]

Thanks for the pointer - I didn't realize there were different rules compared to Github's file filter documentation. The files_ignore still doesn't work for me. I created an example repo with a very minimal example of the problem if you want to investigate exactly:

EDIT: This repo is now deleted.
Repo: https://github.com/koshy1123/changed-files-illustrate-bug
Example PR: https://github.com/koshy1123/changed-files-illustrate-bug/pull/1

Example action run that was undesirable: https://github.com/koshy1123/changed-files-illustrate-bug/actions/runs/3833710707/jobs/6525429909

See matrix output that has two elements as opposed to just the one I expected. matrix={"folder":["Afolder/ASubFolder","Afolder"]}

All that said, I was able to use the file filter rules to work for my use case, I just changed

files: |
      products/**

to

files: |
      products/*/**

which works well enough for me since I don't expect to capture changes from the top level folder for my action.

Happy to leave this closed, but I leave it to your discretion. Thanks again for your help!

[jackton1]

@koshy1123 This should now be resolved