feature request: download zip artefacts as .zip, not .zip.zip

[tombrus]

After a action is finished I can download the produced artifacts from a popup menu in the upper right corner of the build log.

When it is a zip file it will show up as " a-file.zip" but after downloading it will show up as " a-file.zip.zip" on my disk and I need to unpack twice.

Can the download logic be changed so that zip files are not re-zipped?

Thanks!

Tom

[BrightRan]

Did you use the action actions/upload-artifact to upload artifacts in your workflow?

I tested and checked this with different OSs, all the downloaded artifacts were normal and shown as .zip, not .zip.zip .

If possible, can you share your repository with us, so that we can check your workflow configurations to analyze the root cause?

[tombrus]

Thanks for the quick reply BrightRan!

On this page there is a DclareForMPS.zip that downloads on my mac (safari 13.0.5) as  DclareForMPS.zip.zip.

I used  actions/upload-artifact@v1.

You will find whatever you need in the underlaying project.

Hope you can shed some light :slight_smile:

-Tom

[BrightRan]

When using the action  actions/upload-artifact to upload artifacts, the action will automatically package the files in the specific path  (can be a directory path or a file path) as a ZIP and names the ZIP with the specific name (artifact name).

I checked your workflow configurations, and found:

- name: "publish action-artifact zip"
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v1
        with:
          name: DclareForMPS.zip
          path: build/artifacts/DclareForMPS/DclareForMPS.zip

There are 2 questions in your workflow about this:

1. You have set the artifact name as DclareForMPS.zip , so the artifact will be zipped as DclareForMPS.zip.zip.

2. Before upload the artifact, you have zipped the files as a ZIP in the specific path , that means the uploaded file itself is already a ZIP file. This is the root cause that you must unzip your artifact twice.

After executing the action  actions/upload-artifact , the structure of your artifact will like below:

DclareForMPS.zip.zip
┕ DclareForMPS.zip

To avoid this misunderstanding, I recommend you take the following updates:

1. Set the artifact name as DclareForMPS , not  DclareForMPS.zip.

2. Before upload the artifact, directly copy the folders or files you want to upload as artifact into the specific path  ( build/artifacts/DclareForMPS ), instead of zipping them at first.

3. After above two updates, the step configuration should look like below:

   • name: “publish action-artifact zip”
     uses: actions/upload-artifact@v1
     with:
     name: DclareForMPS
     path: build/artifacts/DclareForMPS

[brianjmurrell]

I think the real root problem of this issue is the inability to download artifacts in any other format than having them zipped before being sent. This is really super annoying to be completely honest about it. If I want to peruse a number of logfiles in artifacts for example, every one I click on first requires me to jump through the extract-archive process.

[tombrus]

That explains a lot! Thanks.

I think I was a bit misled by the term artifact which sounds more like a file then a dir to me, but that is bias ;-).

This gives me the workaround I needed.

I would still like to propose this as a feature request though:

   - do not zip an already zipped file if it is the only artifact

Thanks again!

[rusefillc]

Hello from 2024!

Please consider not zipping zip files exactly as requested above.

[mkorsukov]

It would be nice having skipUnzip boolean option for the actions/download-artifact@v4 to get the artifact(s) as is (zip-compressed). I do my best to name the artifact the desired way (eg. AppName-version+hash.zip) for actions/upload-artifact@v4 in the previous job / step, and I need to simply get it later.

I think this is related issue: actions/upload-artifact#405

[flywire]

See also actions/upload-artifact#426