Should the action also output a Markdown report in a check run?

[maelle]

See https://developer.github.com/v3/checks/runs/#output-object

And e.g. https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/pull/258/checks?check_run_id=555253517

It'd be something nicer to read than the log.

Not sure if very useful. I thought of this when seeing other link checker actions mentioning "Markdown reports".

[maelle]

Another advantage of a Markdown report that'd e.g. be

Found 3 broken links.

# In content/file1.md

[https://broken.com](https://broken.com)
[https://broken2.com](https://broken2.com)

Links would be clickable so it's easier to double check (which is the first thing I'd do to fix a broken link, trying to navigate to it).

Or it could be organized by URL (if they appear in several files).

I wonder whether the report should also make filenames clickable (to directly see where in the source the problem is.

The API also has https://developer.github.com/v3/checks/runs/#annotations-object but I don't know whether it can be used in a workflow launched from a PR from a fork for instance.

End of suggestion :-)

[vsoch]

I’m not sure that I follow - aside from an output in markdown, can you show me real examples in the wild for what you are looking for?

[SuperKogito]

I like the idea cuz it is super practical :smile: The cool thing about .csv is that we can easily convert it to almost any other format including .md. As for the report, making everything clickable is always better for the user. The API looks useful, but we should test it first or find examples of it, because I wonder how would the output look like?

[maelle]

https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/runs/555253517?check_suite_focus=true is generated from https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/blob/4a67a67e234ef5cd02e82877feb01ed2444bf1f7/.github/workflows/pr.yml#L56

In the case of this action, the check wouldn't be created but updated. I have never done that.

[maelle]

The example is for "output object"

[maelle]

https://github.com/krzkaczor/lighthouse-keeper-example/pull/2/checks

[maelle]

https://github.com/treosh/lighthouse-ci-action/issues/2#issuecomment-568706564

[SuperKogito]

The last link is a quite helpful. Not only it shows that we can display the report as markdown but also it gives an idea on what improvements we can have for the logs too. @vsoch what do you think of it? :)

[maelle]

I wasn't able to find more links, maybe it is under used/ documented or I am using wrong keywords.

For the first example (the less useful one) that is a workflow of mine where I just tried out API params from the docs to see where the "output object" would show up, I had no idea!

[vsoch]

Hmm, so this I need to think about. It's not that the idea isn't cool, but it requires enabling checks which might be one step too many, and mean that the urlchecker-action doesn't work off the bat for most that don't know to do this (which is a very bad thing to set up). I also don't totally see the benefit of having a markdown with links that are broken? Why would someone want to click a broken link? So my 0.02 - let's keep this open and think of a strong use case for it, and if we find that, then circle back to talk about it. I don't think we have a strong use case yet, and the drawbacks that it adds to require checks are more substantial.

[maelle]

Not a strong use case but if you give me a list of potentially broken URLs in my content I'll

1. try to open them just to check they're indeed broken;
2. copy-paste them to look for them in my files (but not that much easier from Markdown "copy link" than from the log double-click I guess).