actionlint

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I tried using actionlint in a small reusable Github Action that I develop and I got a lot of false positives (see below).

$ actionlint action.yml 
action.yml:1:1: "on" section is missing in workflow [syntax-check]
  |
1 | name: "Setup Docker on macOS"
  | ^~~~~
action.yml:1:1: "jobs" section is missing in workflow [syntax-check]
  |
1 | name: "Setup Docker on macOS"
  | ^~~~~
action.yml:2:1: unexpected key "description" for "workflow" section. expected one of "concurrency", "defaults", "env", "jobs", "name", "on", "permissions", "run-name" [syntax-check]
  |
2 | description: "Setup Docker on macOS using Colima, Lima-VM, and Homebrew."
  | ^~~~~~~~~~~~
action.yml:3:1: unexpected key "inputs" for "workflow" section. expected one of "concurrency", "defaults", "env", "jobs", "name", "on", "permissions", "run-name" [syntax-check]
  |
3 | inputs:
  | ^~~~~~~
action.yml:8:1: unexpected key "outputs" for "workflow" section. expected one of "concurrency", "defaults", "env", "jobs", "name", "on", "permissions", "run-name" [syntax-check]
  |
8 | outputs:
  | ^~~~~~~~
action.yml:18:1: unexpected key "runs" for "workflow" section. expected one of "concurrency", "defaults", "env", "jobs", "name", "on", "permissions", "run-name" [syntax-check]
   |
18 | runs:
   | ^~~~~

All these missing sections and unexpected keys are completely fine when you are developing a reusable Github Action that gets published in the marketplace. For reference, I ran the tool over this file.

I would love if this tool had a toggle to tell it the action being linted is a reusable one and it could adapt accordingly to such scenario.

Thanks!

AFAIK actionlint is used to lint workflow files, not action files...

Very likely, that's its current state, yes. But why not cover both? 😄

Because linting an Action is different than linting a workflow. The name of the tool is maybe a bit misleading, but its purpose is well defined on the homepage: "actionlint is a static checker for GitHub Actions workflow files."

@AlexandreDecan it's not much different (did I ever say they were the same thing?), besides a few schema items. Anyway, this issue is a suggestion/feature request to the project. A project's purpose might change over time. :)

Indeed :-) But remember you started your message with "I got a lot of false positives", my point was it's not surprising to have false positives if the tool is applied on the wrong file :-D

This might be a duplicate of https://github.com/rhysd/actionlint/issues/46 ?