git-auto-commit Action

The GitHub Action for committing files for the 80% use case.

A GitHub Action to detect changed files during a Workflow run and to commit and push them back to the GitHub repository. By default, the commit is made in the name of "GitHub Actions" and co-authored by the user that made the last commit.

If you want to learn more how this Action works under the hood, check out this article by Michael Heap.

Usage

Add the following step at the end of your job, after other steps that might add or change files.

- uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]

Note that the Action has to be used in a Job that runs on a UNIX system (eg.

ubuntu-latest

contents: write

The following is an extended example with all possible options available for this Action.

- uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]
  with:
    # Optional, but recommended
    # Defaults to "Apply automatic changes"
    commit_message: Automated Change

# Optional branch name where commit should be pushed to.
# Defaults to the current branch.
branch: feature-123

# Optional. Used by `git-commit`.
# See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit#_options
commit_options: '--no-verify --signoff'

# Optional glob pattern of files which should be added to the commit
# Defaults to all (.)
# See the `pathspec`-documentation for git
# - https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add#Documentation/git-add.txt-ltpathspecgt82308203
# - https://git-scm.com/docs/gitglossary#Documentation/gitglossary.txt-aiddefpathspecapathspec
file_pattern: src/*.js tests/*.js *.php

# Optional local file path to the repository
# Defaults to the root of the repository
repository: .

# Optional commit user and author settings
commit_user_name: My GitHub Actions Bot # defaults to "GitHub Actions"
commit_user_email: [email protected] # defaults to "[email protected]"
commit_author: Author <actions> # defaults to author of the commit that triggered the run

# Optional tag message 
# Action will create and push a new tag to the remote repository and the defined branch
tagging_message: 'v1.0.0'

# Optional. Used by `git-status`
# See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-status#_options
status_options: '--untracked-files=no'

# Optional. Used by `git-add`
# See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add#_options
add_options: '-u'

# Optional. Used by `git-push`
# See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push#_options
push_options: '--force'

# Optional. Disable dirty check and always try to create a commit and push
skip_dirty_check: true    

# Optional. Skip internal call to `git fetch`
skip_fetch: true    

# Optional. Prevents the shell from expanding filenames. 
# Details: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Filename-Expansion.html
disable_globbing: true

Please note that the Action depends on

bash

bash

Example Workflow

In this example, we're running

php-cs-fixer

Note that we explicitly specify

${{ github.head_ref }}

pull_request

push

name: php-cs-fixer

on:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches:
      - "main"
jobs:
  php-cs-fixer:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/[email protected]
  with:
    ref: ${{ github.head_ref }}

- name: Run php-cs-fixer
  uses: docker://oskarstark/php-cs-fixer-ga

- uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]
  with:
    commit_message: Apply php-cs-fixer changes

Inputs

Checkout

action.yml

Outputs

You can use these outputs to trigger other Actions in your Workflow run based on the result of

git-auto-commit-action

• changes_detected

  : Returns either "true" or "false" if the repository was dirty and files have changed.

• commit_hash

  : Returns the full hash of the commit if one was created.

Example

  - name: "Run if changes have been detected"
    if: steps.auto-commit-action.outputs.changes_detected == 'true'
    run: echo "Changes!"


name: "Run if no changes have been detected"
if: steps.auto-commit-action.outputs.changes_detected == 'false'
run: echo "No Changes!"

Limitations & Gotchas

The goal of this Action is to be "the Action for committing files for the 80% use case". Therefore you might run into issues if your Workflow falls into the not supported 20% portion.

The following is a list of edge cases the Action knowingly does not support:

No

git pull

git pull

git push

No support for running the Action in build matrices. For example, if your Workflow is using build matrices, and you want that each job commits and pushes files to the remote, you will run into the issue, that the repository in the workflow will become out of date. As the Action will not do a

git pull

No support for

git rebase

git merge

git-auto-commit

If this Action doesn't work for your workflow, check out EndBug/add-and-commit.

Checkout the correct branch

You must use

action/[email protected]

push

pull_request

ref

- uses: actions/[email protected]
  with:
    ref: ${{ github.head_ref }}

You have to do this to avoid that the

checkout

Commits made by this Action do not trigger new Workflow runs

The resulting commit will not trigger another GitHub Actions Workflow run. This is due to limitations set by GitHub.

When you use the repository's GITHUBTOKEN to perform tasks on behalf of the GitHub Actions app, events triggered by the GITHUBTOKEN will not create a new workflow run. This prevents you from accidentally creating recursive workflow runs.

You can change this by creating a new Personal Access Token (PAT), storing the token as a secret in your repository and then passing the new token to the

actions/checkout

- uses: actions/[email protected]
  with:
    token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}

If you work in an organization and don't want to create a PAT from your personal account, we recommend using a robot account for the token.

Advanced Uses

name: Format PHP

on: [push, pull_request, pull_request_target]

jobs:
  php-cs-fixer:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/[email protected]

    - name: Run php-cs-fixer
      uses: docker://oskarstark/php-cs-fixer-ga

    - uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]
      with:
        commit_message: Apply php-cs-fixer changes

- uses: actions/[email protected]
  with:
    # Fetch the last 2 commits instead of just 1. (Fetching just 1 commit would overwrite the whole history)
    fetch-depth: 2

# Other steps in your workflow to trigger a changed file

- name: Get last commit message
  id: last-commit-message
  run: |
    echo "::set-output name=msg::$(git log -1 --pretty=%s)"

- uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]
  with:
    commit_message: ${{ steps.last-commit-message.outputs.msg }}
    commit_options: '--amend --no-edit'
    push_options: '--force'
    skip_fetch: true

Troubleshooting

Action does not push commit to repository

Make sure to checkout the correct branch.

Action does not push commit to repository: Authentication Issue

If your Workflow can't push the commit to the repository because of authentication issues, please update your Workflow configuration and usage of

actions/checkout

Updating the

token

Push to protected branches

If your repository uses protected branches you have to make some changes to your Workflow for the Action to work properly: You need a Personal Access Token and you either have to allow force pushes or the Personal Acess Token needs to belong to an Administrator.

First, you have to create a new Personal Access Token (PAT), store the token as a secret in your repository and pass the new token to the

actions/checkout

- uses: actions/[email protected]
  with:
    token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}

You can learn more about Personal Access Token in the GitHub documentation.

Note: If you're working in an organisation and you don't want to create the PAT from your personal account, we recommend using a bot-account for such tokens.

If you go the "force pushes" route, you have to enable force pushes to a protected branch (See documentation) and update your Workflow to use force push like this.

    - uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]
      with:
        commit_message: Apply php-cs-fixer changes
        push_options: --force

No new workflows are triggered by the commit of this action

This is due to limitations set up by GitHub, commits of this Action do not trigger new Workflow runs.

Running the tests

The package has tests written in bats. Before you can run the test suite locally, you have to install the dependencies with

npm

yarn

npm install
yarn

You can run the test suite with

npm

yarn

npm run test
yarn test

Versioning

We use SemVer for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.

We also provide major version tags to make it easier to always use the latest release of a major version. For example you can use

stefanzweifel/[email protected]

Credits

• Stefan Zweifel
• All Contributors

This Action has been inspired and adapted from the auto-commit-Action of the Canadian Digital Service and this commit-Action by Eric Johnson.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.