(Optionally) Ref to a branch and if it doesn't exist, use default

[obedparla]

Hey!

Is there a way to get a ref to work like an optional OR? For example:

// GITHUB_HEAD_REF being the name of the branch if my google-foo didn't fail me
ref: ${GITHUB_HEAD_REF} || master

My use-case: I have multiple repos that depend on each other sometimes. If they do, they all share the same branch name for a feature (e.g feature/add-tests). I want to pull the repos with those branches when they exist, but if they don't (as it's not always necessary to change code in all repos), it'll pull master.

Thanks!

[obedparla]

Thinking about this further, I guess I can just run a bash command before this to define the branch name and export a variable to use in the checkout action. But if I have multiple repos this would become a lot of copy paste code for each repo 😄

I'm just wondering wether there's built-in way, or maybe a potential feature?

[vicmassy]

Looking for the same feature here!

Any updates on this?

[iBotPeaches]

Just hit this, this would be so handy. Now I'm thinking I'll also take a route of checking if the branch is available in the other repo.

[vinayakkulkarni]

Is there a workaround for this?

[tristan957]

@vinayakkulkarni here is a pattern that I have been using.

https://github.com/hse-project/hse/blob/master/.github/workflows/builds.yaml#L99

Determine if branch exists using git ls-remote.

[chingc]

I have a similar use case and was hoping actions/checkout would have something like a fallback-to-default boolean option. For the longest time I've been copy/pasting some ugly bash I wrote, but I recently got tired of it and wrote a composite action. I've included it below. The options you see are all the ones I need for my use case, so I didn't bother adding anything else. Feel free to modify it. Hope you find it useful.

# .github/actions/checkout/action.yml

# This is essentially the same as actions/checkout, but will
# fallback to the default branch if the ref does not exist.
# https://github.com/actions/checkout

name: Checkout

inputs:
  fetch-depth:
    default: 1
    required: false
    type: number
  path:
    default: ''
    required: false
    type: string
  repository:
    default: ${{ github.repository }}
    required: false
    type: string
  ref:
    default: ''
    required: false
    type: string
  token:
    default: ${{ github.token }}
    required: false
    type: string

runs:
  using: composite

  steps:
  - id: repo
    shell: bash
    env:
      GH_TOKEN: ${{ inputs.token }}
    run: |
      if [[ -z "${{ inputs.ref }}" ]]
      then
        if [[ "${{ inputs.repository }}" != "${{ github.repository }}" ]]
        then
          USING="default branch"
        else
          USING="$(gh api /repos/${{ inputs.repository }}/commits/${{ github.sha }}/branches-where-head --jq '.[0].name')"
        fi
        echo "::notice::Checkout: ${{ inputs.repository }} using ${USING}"
        echo "::set-output name=ref-exists::true"
      else
        if git ls-remote --heads --quiet --exit-code https://${{ inputs.token }}@github.com/${{ inputs.repository }}.git ${{ inputs.ref }}
        then
          echo "::notice::Checkout: ${{ inputs.repository }} using ${{ inputs.ref }}"
          echo "::set-output name=ref-exists::true"
        else
          USING="$(gh api /repos/${{ inputs.repository }} --jq '.default_branch')"
          echo "::notice::Checkout: ${{ inputs.repository }} does not have ref ${{ inputs.ref }} (fallback to ${USING})"
          echo "::set-output name=ref-exists::false"
          echo "::set-output name=default-branch::${USING}"
        fi
      fi

  - if: steps.repo.outputs.ref-exists == 'true'
    uses: actions/checkout@v3
    with:
      fetch-depth: ${{ inputs.fetch-depth }}
      path: ${{ inputs.path }}
      repository: ${{ inputs.repository }}
      ref: ${{ inputs.ref }}
      token: ${{ inputs.token }}

  - if: steps.repo.outputs.ref-exists == 'false'
    uses: actions/checkout@v3
    with:
      fetch-depth: ${{ inputs.fetch-depth }}
      path: ${{ inputs.path }}
      repository: ${{ inputs.repository }}
      ref: ${{ steps.repo.outputs.default-branch }}
      token: ${{ inputs.token }}

[YBadiss]

For anyone looking for other simple options, you can use continue-on-error and steps.<step_id>.outcome to achieve this fallback pretty easily:

steps:
  - name: Try checkout on first branch
    uses: actions/checkout@v4
    id: bad-checkout
    continue-on-error: true
    with:
      repository: actions/checkout
      ref: some-bad-branch
  # If the first checkout fails, we checkout the `main` branch by default
  - name: Fallback to main branch
    if: steps.bad-checkout.outcome == 'failure'
    uses: actions/checkout@v4
    with:
      repository: actions/checkout
      ref: main

[acoulton]

It's a shame this isn't directly supported. The solution in #512 (comment) works but it takes a while to run because actions/checkout attempts 2 retries at 12 second intervals before the bad-checkout step fails and the job continues to create the new branch.

[sergeykranga]

i think a better solution is proposed in this PR #1615 but we need a review from actions/actions-launch team to get it merged