Is this meant to be used in conjunction with "Deploy from a branch"?

[BlairCurrey]

"Deploy from a branch"? is in reference to the Github pages configuration option for the source. As opposed to "Github Actions". These are the two options in the Github Pages tab in the repo settings.

Originally I thought this was supposed to be used in conjunction with the "Github Actions" (since this is a github action after all...) but it does not publish. I just want to avoid the extra action if I can help it.

When using the "Github Actions" source, my action using JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action completes successfully and the gh-pages branch is added/updated correctly but the url returns 404 and the pages settings in the repo show its not deployed. Is this expected?

It does work when using the "Deploy from a branch" option and using "gh-pages" as the root. My action using JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action runs, then github's pages-build-deployment runs.

This is my gh action using JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action :

name: Build and Deploy
on:
  push:
    branches: ["main"]
  # Allows manually running from Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
  contents: write
jobs:
  build-and-deploy:
    concurrency: # only run latest build-and-deploy job
      group: pages
      cancel-in-progress: true
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout 🛎️
        uses: actions/checkout@v3


      - name: Install and Build 🔧
        run: |
          npm i
          npm run build


      - name: Deploy 🚀
        uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@v4
        with:
          folder: dist

https://github.com/BlairCurrey/peggle-clone/blob/main/.github/workflows/build-and-deploy.yml#L1-L27

The "Github Action" option has a "Beta" tag - not sure how long it's been around. It might be the case that the answer to this question used to be self evident (there was no option) but ATM I think it could use explicitly stating in the docs.

[JamesIves]

There's an underlying build job that GitHub Pages performs that has nothing to do with this action. They recently exposed it to the repo view, but they work independently.

GitHub has a similar action to this that they have been developing, but like you said it's still in beta.

[BlairCurrey]

There's an underlying build job that GitHub Pages performs that has nothing to do with this action.

Thanks for offering more details. Should this job alone not only build the branch but also publish the page (even without that underlying build job that GitHub Pages performs)? Or does that underlying job need to run afterward to do that publishing?

[JamesIves]

All you need to do is move files to a specific branch designated in your repo settings (which this action does). The part that makes the page visible after you've moved the files happens without you doing anything extra.

[francisbarton]

Hi @BlairCurrey, I think I have been in the same situation as you. It turns out that this deploy action is supposed to be used with the "Deploy from a branch" setting - you don't need to switch to the "Use Github Actions" setting. Thanks to @inorganik for making this clear here

[BlairCurrey]

Thank you for sharing this. That was precisely the same issue.