Unable to clone outside of GITHUB_WORKSPACE directory

Hi Guys. I have a directory where the source code is located. I'm trying to create an action to:

Pull the last code on that directory (example /home/my-code/src)
Run npm install on that directory
Run npm run build on that directory.

Anyway, I set the env var $GITHUB_WORKSPACE into my yml file, but it seems to be not respecting the directory where the code is cloned / pulled in.

My script:

name: Development Deploy

on:
  push:
    branches: [ develop ]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: self-hosted

    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [10.10.0]
    steps:
      - name: Updating base code from develop
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          ref: refs/heads/develop
          GITHUB_WORKSPACE: /home/my-code/src

    ... Another steps here

The log says the following:

Added matchers: 'checkout-git'. Problem matchers scan action output for known warning or error strings and report these inline.
Syncing repository: repoowner/reponame
Working directory is '/etc/actions-runner/website/src/reponame'

Is there anyway I can use the existing directory to use the checkout action? I want this to be cloned on /home/my-code/src

Thanks

I could be wrong, but I think that's a reserved variable that already has meaning in this system.

Why do you need to specify where the code is cloned? This action takes care of that for you.

Today the path input is the only way to change the directory where the code is cloned. Also there is a restriction that it must be under GITHUB_WORKSPACE. If you want to get around that limitation, you could add a run step to move or copy the folder - or soft/hard link too i guess but but might unexpected issues later 🤷‍♂

@jsg2021

So we're running a self-hosted runner, so the runner is in /etc and we don't want our code to be on that location. @jsg2021

Thanks @ericsciple . The limitation with path parameter is as you said, it needs to be under GITHUB_WORKSPACE. Tried with absolute paths and ../../{blabla} but error hapenned.

This is important functionality for our builds because we have long repository names. We're getting paths like:
D:\a\VeryLongRepositoryNameAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\VeryLongRepositoryNameAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\src\ALongProjectNameBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB\ALongProjectNameBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB.csproj

We're hitting MAX_PATH on Windows builds. We need to be able to checkout and build in a directory like: D:\a\s\src\ALongProjectName...

Perhaps you could create a symlink from the github workspace folder (_work by default) to another location.

This won't help long repository names though..

@ericsciple

I was running into the same issue, @ericsciple thanks for the workaround suggestion! :)

do you know if the $GITHUB_WORKSPACE variable can be changed elsewhere?

On windows, too

Run actions/checkout@v2
  with:
    path: C:/nodejs
    repository: gengjiawen/node
    token: ***
    ssh-strict: true
    persist-credentials: true
    clean: true
    fetch-depth: 1
    lfs: false
    submodules: false
  env:
    PYTHON_VERSION: 3.8
    FLAKY_TESTS: dontcare
Error: Repository path 'C:\nodejs' is not under 'D:\a\node\node'

Don't enforce that checkout path must be inside of Github Workspace

@LebedevRI

Hi, running into the same issue. Thanks to @LebedevRI for the fix. But any idea when this fix will be available?

I tried configuring self hosted runner as suggested by @pvanloo in above [comment] (#197 (comment)) and it worked for me.

If someone needs a specific workspace, I would suggest to give a try with self hosted runner and specify your workspace path in work folder configuration.

what is the workaround? fetch the branch as zip and extract into outside of workspace folder?

seems mv folder ..

what is the workaround? fetch the branch as zip and extract into outside of workspace folder?

I put a workaround further up

One workaround might be to create a symbolic link
So under windows after the checkout for example

      - name: Link working directory
        run: New-Item -Path D:/rust -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value D:/a/rust-build/rust-build

That way a shorter path can be used.
Under Linux it'd be "ln -s" instead

That way you can for example extract things into D:/a/rust-build/rust-build, but then do any compiling via D:/rust as they both point to the same place

what is the workaround? fetch the branch as zip and extract into outside of workspace folder?

Please check if this helps: #197 (comment)

I have made this PR #1493 exactly for this issue.

I'm doing another follow-up on this request regarding PR #1493

@cory-miller

I'm doing another follow-up on this request regarding PR #1493

@cory-miller, @takost , @luketomlinson

If you have a repository name that ends in a dot, you can't use the checkout action on a Windows runner, because the workspace directory is always the repository name, but Windows doesn't allow for directory names with a trailing dot...

For example: M.A.R.S.

@eXpl0it3r

@eXpl0it3r why don't you just check out to an explicitly specified directory name like mars?

See the issue we're in. I can't clone anywhere else other than the $GITHUB_WORKSPACE which is also the repo name (i.e. M.A.R.S.), which again can't be created on a Windows agent due to the trailing dot.

You may have missed the workaround in my comment further above:

I've worked around GITHUB_WORKSPACE by doing a manual git clone using commands since this action hardly saves any code anyway, which you can see in the link I posted above to my public GitHub Actions repository.

If you do a git clone in a shell run step you can put it anywhere you want and with any directory name you want as an extra arg to the git clone command.

Or is the problem you're having that the agent fails to spawn properly as it tries to pre-create the $GITHUB_WORKSPACE directory which fails even without using a checkout action?

That's possible indeed, I mostly wanted to report this additional limitation/issue with the Action as is

revert to cloning defang and samples into cwd

I ran into issues using actions/checkout to clone a 2nd repository related to the .git subfolders conflicting, so I tried cloning into a directory in a tmp dir outside of GITHUB_WORKSPACE, which failed due to this issue. The git exit codes aren't really that informative of what is going on -- it would be nice if actions/checkout could give a better error message related to corner cases where it fails, such as cloning a git repository into a subfolder of another git repository (not talking about git submodules, just fetching another unrelated repository as a test for another piece of code).

Work around actions/checkout#197

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Unable to clone outside of GITHUB_WORKSPACE directory #197

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jsg2021 commented on Mar 25, 2020

jsg2021 commented on Mar 25, 2020

ericsciple commented on Mar 25, 2020

eabuslaiman30 commented on Mar 25, 2020

ddrinka commented on Sep 1, 2020

dukeofphilberg commented on Sep 23, 2020

AzfaarQureshi commented on Oct 5, 2020

gengjiawen commented on Oct 19, 2020

moelleru commented on Dec 10, 2020

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