Re-using actions from other repos (what is .github/actions for?)

[JonnyOThan]

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TLDR: I have a reusable action in SomeUser/SomeRepo/.github/actions/build/action.yml and I'm trying to call it from a workflow in a different repo with uses: SomeUser/SomeRepo/build@main but I get an error:

Error: Can't find 'action.yml', 'action.yaml' or 'Dockerfile' for action 'SomeUser/SomeRepo/build@main'.

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I have a repo with a bunch of common tools and files, and I thought I'd put some reusable actions in there. This repo is NOT solely for hosting actions, even though I see that is "recommended." If possible I'd like to keep it that way.

In the documentation it recommends placing such actions in the ".github/actions" directory:

If you plan to combine action, workflow, and application code in a single repository, we recommend storing actions in the .github directory. For example, .github/actions/action-a and .github/actions/action-b.

I can't find any other reference to this directory anywhere online, mostly because search tools (google, bing) seem to ignore the punctuation.

How do I reuse this action? Should it not be in the .github/actions folder? Do I need to include that in the uses path?

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OK, so fully specifying the path to the action works: uses: SomeUser/SomeRepo/.github/actions/build@main

So what's the point of the .github/actions directory?

[ste-xx]

It's just a recommendation.
So if you managed many different builds, you can easily find the (local) build actions.

Standalone actions contains normally the action.yml in the root directory.
Example: https://github.com/actions/github-script

So that you can call it like this:

- uses: actions/github-script@v7