Discrepancy in the documentation

[dsame]

Description:

README says : "The Python packages ... are originally compiled from source in /opt/hostedtoolcache/ ... which makes them non-relocatable."

But instruction to setup tool cache on self-hosted runners without internet access mentions "RUNNER_DIR/_work/_tool"

This leads to the confusion, see the discussion of #459

[techman83]

Hi @dsame - I've done a bit of digging. When this documentation was written, it was likely based on the implementation within actions/python-versions at the time. However shortly before this change was made to the docs, the code for Linux/Mac aligned with the windows self-hosted experience.

#394 was introduced to align the implementation with the documentation. This is a good thing, however the documentation doesn't reflect how actions/python-versions works now. The upstream now uses RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE if AGENT_TOOLSDIRECTORY is not set. The implementation in #394 overwrites RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE to the path that is the default (/opt/hostedtoolcache) for hosted runners. However self-hosted runners use a configurable relative path, provided during launch of the runner.

I realise I am being pedantic in relation to something that breaks my use case, however I feel strongly that the better technical outcome would be that users of self-hosted runners get a consistent experience compared to hosted, and it is what I attempted in #461. The added bonus is that the behaviour in that PR for users of the hosted runners is identical with or without my change, whilst also simplifying the self-hosted experience in the process.

[techman83]

The initial issue has been resolved and the documentation for macOS improved to be clear about the issue. So this can probably be closed.

[IvanZosimov]

I agree with @techman83 and think that this issue can be closed because this discrepancy appears only for python binaries on macOS self-hosted runners and this fact is mentioned in the documentation for setup-python.

By now I'm going to close this issue, If you have any additional questions, please, feel free to ping us.