[bug] Upload of artifacts fail on Windows if empty files included

[mkht]

What happened?

When .gitkeep is included in the list of files to be uploaded, actions/upload-artifact will fail with error.
This may only happen on windows-latest runners. ubuntu-latest seems to be fine.
This has been occurring since today (2021/12/08).
Yesterday (2021/12/07) was fine.

Error: Unexpected response. Unable to upload chunk to https://pipelines.actions.githubusercontent.com/R72NorkoW9ZqUdNNnkQJ7wZXzUBqqBP6BKGnI5jkEJDBXVD3cp/_apis/resources/Containers/17385241?itemPath=artifact1%5C.gitkeep
##### Begin Diagnostic HTTP information #####
Status Code: 400
Status Message: Bad Request
Header Information: {
  "cache-control": "no-store,no-cache",
  "pragma": "no-cache",
  "transfer-encoding": "chunked",
  "content-type": "application/json; charset=utf-8",
  "strict-transport-security": "max-age=2592000",
  "x-tfs-processid": "5868939c-6677-454c-8ba5-a6a3f6dd88ad",
  "activityid": "5b5c5588-a9ef-412d-891c-e6f9e9a34a57",
  "x-tfs-session": "5b5c5588-a9ef-412d-891c-e6f9e9a34a57",
  "x-vss-e2eid": "5b5c5588-a9ef-412d-891c-e6f9e9a34a57",
  "x-vss-senderdeploymentid": "13a19993-c6bc-326c-afb4-32c5519f46f0",
  "x-frame-options": "SAMEORIGIN",
  "x-cache": "CONFIG_NOCACHE",
  "x-msedge-ref": "Ref A: EBFE4D5B86A44CE792391F4FD8D6E1E7 Ref B: BN3EDGE0913 Ref C: 2021-12-08T10:20:16Z",
  "date": "Wed, 08 Dec 2021 10:20:15 GMT"
}
###### End Diagnostic HTTP information ######
Warning: Aborting upload for D:\a\testartifact\testartifact\Folder1\.gitkeep due to failure
##[debug]deleting temporary gzip file C:\Users\RUNNER~1\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp-5132-tBLrtZS66WVd
##[debug]File: 1/2. D:\a\testartifact\testartifact\Folder1\.gitkeep took 45.090 milliseconds to finish upload
Error: aborting artifact upload

What did you expect to happen?

The artifact upload should be successful.

How can we reproduce it?

I have created a simple repository to reproduce this issue, please see the workflow log.
Uploading Folder1 which contains .gitkeep fails and uploading Folder2 which does not contain it succeeds.
https://github.com/mkht/testartifact/runs/4455738308

workflow yaml

name: test

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  Build:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    timeout-minutes: 10
    defaults:
      run:
        shell: pwsh

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: create test dir & file (with .gitkeep)
        run: |
          New-Item -Path ./Folder1 -ItemType Directory -Force
          New-Item -Path ./Folder1/.gitkeep -ItemType File -Force
          'test1' | Out-File -FilePath ./Folder1/test1.txt -Force

      - name: create test dir & file (without .gitkeep)
        run: |
          New-Item -Path ./Folder2 -ItemType Directory -Force
          'test2' | Out-File -FilePath ./Folder2/test2.txt -Force

      - name: upload with .gitkeep
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
        if: always()
        with:
          name: artifact1
          path: Folder1

      - name: upload without .gitkeep
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
        if: always()
        with:
          name: artifact2
          path: Folder2

Anything else we need to know?

No response

What version of the action are you using?

v2

What are your runner environments?

window

Are you on GitHub Enterprise Server? If so, what version?

No response

[ferpasri]

Is .gitkeep an empty file? 0kb

I have same error with a specific test of my tool that creates an empty log file 0kb

[mkht]

Yes. .gitkeep is an empty.

[t1m0thyj]

Seeing this same issue when uploading a folder that includes an empty file. Only started failing on Windows builds this week, and still uploads fine on the Ubuntu and macOS GHA runners.

[astafan8]

seeing similar issue with .nojakyll file on our repo, https://github.com/QCoDeS/Qcodes/runs/4485121681?check_suite_focus=true. only on Windows build, only recently.

[lilyinstarlight]

We are experiencing the same issue with uploads involving empty files on Windows. It looks like actions/toolkit#748 (which was included in the recent 0.6.0 release of @actions/artifact and 2.3.0 of this action) includes edge case handling for Windows + empty files, since apparently named pipes can't be detected via a stat in msys2. It could possibly be related, but I don't see an immediately obvious reason that change would cause an issue (pinging @zregvart and @konradpabjan just in case though)

[ForNeVeR]

The workaround is to switch to v2.2.4:

- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
+ uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2.2.4

[konradpabjan]

Yup, this bug unfortunately is related the changes in actions/toolkit and named pipes. We'll work on a fix. For the time being though you can pin to an older version of the action as a workaround.