bug: 🐝 The clean-exclude option is not just for cleaning

[koenbollen]

Describe the bug

When setting the clean-exclude option, I was expecting it to only count for a 'clean' step/phase. But there is only one step (rsync the --delete option is just added when clean:true).

The clean-exclude is just a general exclude. If other people exclude files, these files will also not be copied over.

I think this can be fixed with a slight change to the documentation.

Reproduction Steps

Context:
I wanted to deploy to a subfolder with the commit sha as a name for each commit.

Example:

deploy:
  name: Deploy
  needs: [build] # this generates an artifact
  runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  permissions:
    contents: write
  steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      with:
        fetch-depth: 5
    - uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
      with:
        name: my-project-${{github.ref_name}}-${{github.sha}}
        path: dist/${{github.sha}}
    - name: Get Previous Commits
      run: |
        echo "LAST_FIVE_COMMITS<<EOF" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        git rev-list --max-count=5 "${{github.sha}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "EOF" >> $GITHUB_ENV
    - uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@6c2d9db40f9296374acc17b90404b6e8864128c8 # v4
      with:
        folder: dist
        clean-exclude: |
          index.html
          ${{ env.LAST_FIVE_COMMITS }}
        force: false

This only leaves the index.html. Because the ${{github.sha}} i want to deploy is also part of the clean-exclude list, it's never copied over by rsync.

Logs

/usr/bin/rsync -q -av --checksum --progress /home/runner/work/action-tester/action-tester/dist/. github-pages-deploy-action-temp-deployment-folder --delete --exclude index.html --exclude pr-preview/ --exclude 4521fe79967bbb5ce2b3fb13ebc3483375bfbd3f --exclude 001e1f753cc025ef2490ae9b12282b20ed890dfe --exclude 8deac04a32622e86ddc7b560de692a084411fd33 --exclude 22aece381e3fb637c634a1270768462dba48ef7c --exclude 96f1ebeef5b14832e012bd97a628db11ac2be5f4 --exclude CNAME --exclude .nojekyll --exclude .ssh --exclude .git --exclude .github
Checking if there are files to commit…
Running post deployment cleanup jobs… 🗑️

Workflow

deploy:
  name: Deploy
  needs: [build] # this generates an artifact
  runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  permissions:
    contents: write
  steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      with:
        fetch-depth: 5
    - uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
      with:
        name: my-project-${{github.ref_name}}-${{github.sha}}
        path: dist/${{github.sha}}
    - name: Get Previous Commits
      run: |
        echo "LAST_FIVE_COMMITS<<EOF" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        git rev-list --max-count=5 "${{github.sha}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "EOF" >> $GITHUB_ENV
    - uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@6c2d9db40f9296374acc17b90404b6e8864128c8 # v4
      with:
        folder: dist
        clean-exclude: |
          index.html
          ${{ env.LAST_FIVE_COMMITS }}
        force: false

Additional Comments

btw, love this action! Thank you so much. Let me know if I can help with a pull request.

[JamesIves]

Happy to make some changes to the documentation! Do you have any suggestions?

[koenbollen]

Trying to come up with a better description of clean-exclude I find it difficult to correct it.
--exclude is just not only for the deletion operations.

Two options:

1. Change the option to be "exclude" (without the clean-), and the description to explain it will also exclude the files when copying over.
2. Don't use the rsync option --exclude myfile.txt, but the option --filter "P myfile.txt". That does protect files from deletion only.
   From the docs, under "FILTER RULES":

   protect, 'P'
         specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion. ...

(but I'm not very familiar with rsync)

What do you think? Both are not really backwards compatible, but option 2. atleast corrects the described behaviour.

[JamesIves]

I like the name exclude, the clean-exclude option would need to linger for backwards compat reasons though, so both would need to work for the time being. Are you open to making a pull request?

[koenbollen]

Sure, happy to give it a go.

[pratik-pdw]

Can I also exclude certain folders from being cleaned ?
For example if I have folders with name PR-1, PR-2 ? Can I exclude them before cleaning ?

[koenbollen]

Yes, the exclude option also works for folders.