Using a variable as the GitHub action version

[JJ]

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Suppose you want to check in a PR or a push the GitHub action in the version that's in the actual branch. You can use

uses: mygithub/action@my-branch-name

But you would have to change the branch name every time you do that; if you want to test github actions, that gets tired after a while.

You can't use @HEAD because that would be the head of the repository. Github keeps the ref to the branch itself as a variable, so it would be ideal to do something like:

mygithub/action@${{github.head_ref || github.ref_name }}

That, however, fails with

unrecognized named-value: 'github'. Located at position 1 within expression: github.head_ref || github.ref_name

So, long story short, is there an unambiguous way to version the github action to always refer to the branch it's in, or otherwise make a github action use the repo itself, in the current branch?

[spenserblack]

Have you tried uses: ./?

[JJ]

Would that need checkout first?

[spenserblack]

Oh, yes, that's right, I believe you would need to use actions/checkout first. Additionally, if your action needs to be built (like a TypeScript action), you would have to make sure you've committed the latest build to match your source code.

[brucellino]

I cam here to ask this. In my case, I can't use the repo itself. I need to refer to an existing action:

jobs:
  build:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        version:
          - v5.22.2
          - v24.2.1
    name: Ansible Lint ${{ matrix.version }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Run ansible-lint
        uses: ansible/[email protected]

[jpmaniqis]

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Suppose you want to check in a PR or a push the GitHub action in the version that's in the actual branch. You can use

uses: mygithub/action@my-branch-name

But you would have to change the branch name every time you do that; if you want to test github actions, that gets tired after a while.

You can't use @HEAD because that would be the head of the repository. Github keeps the ref to the branch itself as a variable, so it would be ideal to do something like:

mygithub/action@${{github.head_ref || github.ref_name }}

That, however, fails with

unrecognized named-value: 'github'. Located at position 1 within expression: github.head_ref || github.ref_name

So, long story short, is there an unambiguous way to version the github action to always refer to the branch it's in, or otherwise make a github action use the repo itself, in the current branch?