checkout@v2 not getting recent commits

[adnan-kamili]

Assume a Github action with two Jobs - job1 & job2

In job1:
Use checkout action to checkout the repo, update any file in the repo, commit and push the changes.

In job2:

Again use checkout action. The repo doesn't contain the commit made in job1.

Here is a replicable sample:

jobs:
  update-version:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - run: |  
          // update file1.txt
          git add file1.txt
          git config --local user.email "github-actions@users.noreply.github.com"
          git config --local user.name "github-actions"
          git commit -m "updated file1"
          git push
        
  deploy:
    needs: update-version
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: cat publish file
      run: |
        # the changes made in job1 are not reflected here
         cat file1.txt

[jcharnley]

what error code is it giving you, something has changed with my pipeline and not sure what the issue is

[adnan-kamili]

I don't get any error, the checkout succeeds but it doesn't get the latest commits. Seems to use some sort of cache. As a workaround I am doing the following:

• uses: actions/checkout@v2
• run: git pull origin master

[vmehra-pcln]

I ran into the same issue. I have 2 jobs:
Job-1: actions/checkout@v2, modify a file, commit the file, push the file

Job2: actions/checkout@v2

It doesn't error out but it does log below which shows the last commit pushed within Job-1 is not there.

Checking out the ref
  /bin/git checkout --progress --force -B project-name refs/remotes/origin/project-name
  Warning: you are leaving 1 commit behind, not connected to
  any of your branches:

As a workaround, I had to do - run: git pull --no-rebase with Job-2 checkout (similar to what @adnan-kamili mentioned above)

[punksta]

Same here

git checkout --progress --force 29289099907df8d8600cf5c8f58bab9a15dcaac8
Error: fatal: reference is not a tree: 29289099907df8d8600cf5c8f58bab9a15dcaac8
Error: Git checkout failed with exit code: 128
Error: Exit code 1 returned from process: file name '/home/runner/runners/2.277.1/bin/Runner.PluginHost', arguments 'action "GitHub.Runner.Plugins.Repository.v1_0.CheckoutTask, Runner.Plugins"'.

[jcharnley]

changed ubuntu-latest to a acutal version

[sebastian-muthwill]

I ran into the same problem and came across this issue. But could figure out a solution within the documentation.

# The branch, tag or SHA to checkout. When checking out the repository that

    # triggered a workflow, this defaults to the reference or SHA for that event.
    # Otherwise, uses the default branch.
    ref: ''

This means by default the commit where the workflow was triggered will be taken. You can specify the master branch with
ref: 'master'

[brianpham]

Running into the same issue. We should be able to do a checkout again without needing to specific the ref in dispatch workflow.

Dispatch Workflow starts off with checking out branch (2)

1. Checkout branch (1)
2. Create new branch (2) off branch (1)
3. Force push branch (2)
4. Checkout branch (2)

Step 4 seems to be pulling an old branch git sha.

Maybe this is normal behavior? According to this https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/events-that-trigger-workflows#manual-events

If I check out branch (2) it will use the last github_ref. So even if I update the branch (2) and run step 4, it will still pull the older branch. Can someone help confirm?

[mugbug]

I had a similar issue while trying to use standard-version to generate the changelog with previous commits. The problem was that it wasn't fetching the commit history and only the last commit was available. I was able to solve this by running this command, which forces the commit history to be fetched:

git fetch --prune --unshallow

[restfulhead]

As @sebastian-muthwill mentions, you can use the ref attribute to point to a specific branch. This way subsequent jobs always pull the latest code from that branch, and not from the revision that started the workflow.

@mugbug I think fetch-depth: 0 is your friend.

Here's a full example that works for me when running multiple jobs that each generate a change-log file (i.e. modify the branch)

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          ref: main

@adnan-kamili Does this solve your issue?