Non-standard ref names are no longer found

[oxc]

Background

In our repository workflow, we are creating a merge commit of some PRs and pushing it using the naming scheme refs/deploy-bot/${runId}/merge. This is then checked out in later dependant steps, by passing this value as ref:.

Problem description

This stopped working in 4.1.7 with the changes from #1774.

Checkout now results in an error:

Error: A branch or tag with the name 'refs/deploy-bot/9543036827/merge' could not be found

Attempted solutions

I tried switching to an "unqualified ref" name deploy-bot/9543036827/merge in the hopes that the branch can then be found, but then the checkout already fails during fetching:

 Fetching the repository
  /usr/bin/git -c protocol.version=2 fetch --no-tags --prune --no-recurse-submodules --depth=1 origin +refs/heads/deploy-bot/9545625056/merge*:refs/remotes/origin/deploy-bot/9545625056/merge* +refs/tags/deploy-bot/9545625056/merge*:refs/tags/deploy-bot/9545625056/merge*
  The process '/usr/bin/git' failed with exit code 1
  Waiting 17 seconds before trying again

 ...

Alternative solutions

• Use a standard branch ref or tag ref. We would like to avoid having to use standard branch or tag refs, because we don't want to clutter the branch listings in git output and the GitHub UI with our temporary branch names.

[rplankenhorn]

I am also seeing this and we are also using non standard tags. I just tried a workaround that I thought would work but it didn't and failed during the actions/checkout call:

- name: Checkout
  uses: 'actions/checkout@v4'
  with:
     fetch-depth: 0
     ref: develop
- name: Switch to tag
  run: |
     git fetch --all --tags
     git checkout -b customTag [tag]

This is the error I am getting:

/opt/homebrew/bin/git -c protocol.version=2 fetch --prune --no-recurse-submodules origin +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
remote: Repository not found.
Error: fatal: repository 'https://github.com/xxxx/xxxx/' not found
The process '/opt/homebrew/bin/git' failed with exit code 128
Waiting 11 seconds before trying again
/opt/homebrew/bin/git -c protocol.version=2 fetch --prune --no-recurse-submodules origin +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
remote: Repository not found.
Error: fatal: repository 'https://github.com/xxxx/xxxx/' not found
Error: The process '/opt/homebrew/bin/git' failed with exit code 128

[orhantoy]

Can you provide an example workflow of how you were successfully checking out non-standard refs?

[oxc]

Sure, here is a minimal example that demonstrates the breakage introduced with 4.1.7 (breakage in a sense regardless of whether or not this ever was officially supported) https://github.com/oxc/actions-checkout-issue-1782/actions/workflows/demo.yaml

https://github.com/oxc/actions-checkout-issue-1782/blob/main/.github/workflows/demo.yaml

name: Demo for non-standard ref names issue

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  push_ref:
    name: Create non-standard ref name
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    outputs:
      ref: ${{ steps.push.outputs.ref }}

    permissions:
      contents: write

    steps:
      - name: Checkout repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Create dummy commit, and push as non-standard ref
        id: push
        run: |
          git config user.name 'github-actions[bot]'
          git config user.email '41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com'
          echo "Dummy" > dummy
          git add dummy
          git commit -m 'Dummy commit (run id ${{ github.run_id }})'
          git push origin HEAD:$REF
          echo "ref=$REF" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
        env:
          REF: "refs/deploy-bot/${{ github.run_id }}/merge"

  checkout_old_working:
    name: Checkout non-standard ref name (working @4.1.6)
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: push_ref

    steps:
      - name: Checkout repo
        uses: actions/[email protected]
        with:
          ref: ${{ needs.push_ref.outputs.ref }}

      - name: Show latest commit
        run: |
          git log -1
          cat dummy

  checkout_new_failing:
    name: Checkout non-standard ref name (failing @ > 4.1.6)
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: push_ref

    steps:
      - name: Checkout repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          ref: ${{ needs.push_ref.outputs.ref }}

      - name: Show latest commit
        run: |
          git log -1
          cat dummy

[orhantoy]

@oxc Really helpful example, thank you ✨ I opened https://github.com/actions/checkout/pull/1924 to bring back support for that kind of use case.