Wait Last Action

A GitHub Action that waiting for last action run complete.

Scenarios of use

• monorepo: a workflow needs to wait for multiple other workflows to complete
• deploy or run e2e tests once: run a deployment + e2e workflow only after multiple build + unit test workflows are successfully completed

Can I do this with Github already?

Out of the box, Github does not seem to provide a way to only run a workflow once, after other workflows are completed.

The default behavior of the native workflow_run event trigger is to:

• not wait for all dependent workflows to complete to trigger the workflow
• trigger the workflow multiple times (for each completed/dependent workflow)

The workflow_run event will also only trigger a workflow run if the workflow file is on the default branch, typically master or main.

Usage

The following examples show how to configure a workflow named workflow-last.

workflow-last will wait for any other workflows (triggered in the same branch) to complete and then resume its own steps.

Simple example

name: workflow-last

jobs:
  always_last:
    steps:
      - name: Pause until all workflows are completed
        uses: ygqygq2/workflow-wait-action@v1

      - name: Resume and run once, after all workflows are completed
        run: date

Example with options

name: workflow-last

jobs:
  always_last:
    steps:
      - name: Pause until all workflows are completed
        uses: ygqygq2/workflow-wait-action@v1
        with:
          access_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          timeout: 600
          interval: 10
          initial_delay: 0
          associated_workflows: false

      - name: Resume and run once, after all workflows are completed
        run: date

Options

Syntax	Description	Mandatory?	Default value	Example value
access_token	Your GitHub Access Token	No	{{ github.token }}
timeout	Action timeout. If in-progress workflows are not completed within the timeout period, the Action will fails the workflow	No	600
interval	Interval used to poll the status of the workflows	No	10
initial_delay	Initial delay used to give minimal time to all workflows to be queued & started	No	0
associated_workflows	Wait workflow runs that are associated with the head_sha. If set to true, the action will wait for all workflows that are associated with this workflow with the same head_sha	No	false
workflows	List of workflows to wait for. Must be a multiline string using	No	''	| workflow-1 workflow-2

Limitations

Given the following workflows:

• workflow-1 (takes 5 minutes)
• workflow-2 (takes 45 minutes)
• workflow-last (configured to pause until workflow-1 and workflow-2 are completed, takes 10m)

workflow-last will at minimum use 55 minutes/month (= 45 + 10 minutes) of your Github CI plan due to all workflows effectively starting at the same time.