act: Issue: Can't `use` action from repo checked out with actions/checkout

Act version

❯ act --version
act version 0.2.20

Expected behaviour

Expected to be able to locally test a github action workflow that checks out a repo containing another action, and then executes that action in the runner env with uses

Actual behaviour

act fails with error message Error: open /home/*****/gh-action-test-repo/example/action.yaml: no such file or directory

While the repo is sucessfully checked out to the runner env, it appears that act does not look within the runner env when evaluating local uses.

Workflow and/or repository

foo/example is not a real repository.

workflow

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  track:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Example
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          repository: foo/example
          ref: 'master'
          token: ${{ secrets.TOKEN }}
          path: example

      - uses: ./example

Steps to reproduce

`act` output

I’ve scrubbed sensitive information from the log below.

Log

❯ act workflow_dispatch -j track
[track_updates.yml/track] 🚀  Start image=catthehacker/ubuntu:act-latest
[track_updates.yml/track]   🐳  docker run image=catthehacker/ubuntu:act-latest entrypoint=["/usr/bin/tail" "-f" "/dev/null"] cmd=[]
[track_updates.yml/track] ⭐  Run actions/checkout@v2
[track_updates.yml/track]   ☁  git clone 'https://github.com/actions/checkout' # ref=v2
[track_updates.yml/track]   🐳  docker cp src=/home/*****/.cache/act/actions-checkout@v2 dst=/actions/
[track_updates.yml/track]   ❓  ::save-state name=isPost,::true
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::GITHUB_WORKSPACE = '/github/workspace'
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::qualified repository = '*****/example'
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::ref = 'master'
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::commit = 'undefined'
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::clean = true
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::fetch depth = 1
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::lfs = false
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::submodules = false
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::recursive submodules = false
[track_updates.yml/track]   ❓  ::add-matcher::/actions/actions-checkout@v2/dist/problem-matcher.json
| Syncing repository: *****/example
[track_updates.yml/track]   ❓  ::group::Getting Git version info
| Working directory is '/github/workspace/example'
[track_updates.yml/track]   💬  ::debug::Getting git version
| [command]/usr/bin/git version
| git version 2.17.1
[track_updates.yml/track]   ❓  ::endgroup::
| The repository will be downloaded using the GitHub REST API
| To create a local Git repository instead, add Git 2.18 or higher to the PATH
| Downloading the archive
| Writing archive to disk
| Extracting the archive
| [command]/bin/tar xz -C /github/workspace/example/55a2a4cd-1017-460a-aa87-2f9fe0403a6d -f /github/workspace/example/55a2a4cd-1017-460a-aa87-2f9fe0403a6d.tar.gz
| Resolved version *****-example-bd7968a95c64507048d8f41ce61fbd33030a69ce
[track_updates.yml/track]   ❓  ::remove-matcher owner=checkout-git,::
[track_updates.yml/track]   ✅  Success - actions/checkout@v2
[track_updates.yml/track] ⭐  Run ./example
[track_updates.yml/track]   ❌  Failure - ./example
Error: open /home/*****/gh-action-test-repo/example/action.yaml: no such file or directory

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 3 years ago
Comments: 15 (7 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

For reference, this has nothing to do with checkouts per se. And nothing to do with private repositories.

https://github.com/jsoref/nektos-act-issues-550/runs/2263398812?check_suite_focus=true

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:

jobs:
  local-action:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: action-checkout-gha
        if: github.actor != 'nektos/act'
        run: sudo apt-get update -qq > /dev/null 2>/dev/null && sudo apt-get install -qq -y curl ca-certificates unzip > /dev/null 2>/dev/null && curl -L https://github.com/actions/hello-world-javascript-action/archive/refs/heads/main.zip -o example.zip && unzip example.zip -d dummy && mv dummy/* example && rm example.zip && rmdir dummy
      - name: action-checkout-act
        if: github.actor == 'nektos/act'
        run: apt-get update -qq > /dev/null 2>/dev/null && apt-get install -qq -y curl ca-certificates unzip > /dev/null 2>/dev/null && curl -L https://github.com/actions/hello-world-javascript-action/archive/refs/heads/main.zip -o example.zip && unzip example.zip -d dummy && mv dummy/* example && rm example.zip && rmdir dummy

      - uses: ./example
        with:
          who-to-greet: 'Mona the Octocat'

Fwiw, the reason I’m using curl instead of checkout here is that I don’t seem to have a token that makes github’s checkout action happy. But, it does conveniently show that the problem isn’t relating to checking out 😃.

The problem is that the code that looks for action.yml/action.yaml isn’t looking inside the container: https://github.com/nektos/act/blob/b9a7bc620228df56dcc0684f09391ea481c9fb04/pkg/runner/step_context.go#L309-L311

Generally fixing things in act isn’t particularly hard, so if someone wants to give it a try, they’re welcome to.

This isn’t a problem I’m hitting, so it isn’t high on my list (I’m not a member of act fwiw, I’m just trying to clean things up for some of my own workflows).

jsoref on Apr 4, 2021