You can use this GitHub Action to commit changes made in your workflow run directly to your repo: for example, you use it to lint your code, update documentation, commit updated builds, etc....
This is heavily inspired by git-auto-commit-action (by Stefan Zweifel): that action automatically detects changed files and commits them. While this is useful for most situations, this doesn't commit untracked files and can sometimes commit unintended changes (such as package-lock.json or similar, that may have happened during previous steps).
This action lets you choose the path that you want to use when adding & committing changes so that it works as you would normally do using git on your machine.
Add a step like this to your workflow:
- uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v7 # You can change this to use a specific version.
with:
# The arguments for the `git add` command (see the paragraph below for more info)
# Default: '.'
add: 'src'
# The name of the user that will be displayed as the author of the commit.
# Default: depends on the default_author input
author_name: Author Name
# The email of the user that will be displayed as the author of the commit.
# Default: depends on the default_author input
author_email: mail@example.com
# The name of the branch to use, if different from the one that triggered the workflow.
# Default: the branch that triggered the run
branch: some-branch
# The name of the custom committer you want to use, if different from the author of the commit.
# Default: the name of the author (set with either author_name or default_author)
committer_name: Committer Name
# The email of the custom committer you want to use, if different from the author of the commit.
# Default: the email of the author (set with either author_email or default_author)
committer_email: mail@example.com
# The local path to the directory where your repository is located. You should use actions/checkout first to set it up.
# Default: '.'
cwd: './path/to/the/repo'
# Determines the way the action fills missing author name and email. Three options are available:
# - github_actor -> UserName <UserName@users.noreply.github.com>
# - user_info -> Your Display Name <your-actual@email.com>
# - github_actions -> github-actions <email associated with the github logo>
# Default: github_actor
default_author: github_actor
# The message for the commit.
# Default: 'Commit from GitHub Actions (name of the workflow)'
message: 'Your commit message'
# The flag used on the pull strategy. Use NO-PULL to avoid the action pulling at all.
# Default: '--no-rebase'
pull_strategy: 'NO-PULL or --no-rebase or --no-ff or --rebase'
# Whether to push the commit and, if any, its tags to the repo. It can also be used to set the git push arguments (see the paragraph below for more info)
# Default: true
push: false
# The arguments for the `git rm` command (see the paragraph below for more info)
# Default: ''
remove: './dir/old_file.js'
# Whether to use the --signoff option on `git commit` (only boolean values accepted*)
# Default: false
signoff: true
# Arguments for the git tag command (the tag name always needs to be the first word not preceded by an hyphen)
# Default: ''
tag: 'v1.0.0 --force'Multiple options let you provide the git arguments that you want the action to use. It's important to note that these arguments are not actually used with a CLI command, but they are parsed by a package called string-argv, and then used with simple-git.
What does this mean for you? It means that string that contain a lot of nested quotes may be parsed incorrectly, and that specific ways of declaring arguments may not be supported by this libraries. If you're having issues with your argument strings you can check whether they're being parsed correctly either by enabling debug logging for your workflow runs or by testing it directly with string-argv (RunKit demo): if each argument and option is aprsed correctly you'll see an array where every string is an option or value.
The action adds files using a regular git add command, so you can put every kind of argument in the add option. For example, if you want to force-add a file: ./path/to/file.txt --force.
The script will not stop if one of the git commands doesn't match any file. E.g.: if your command shows a "fatal: pathspec 'yourFile' did not match any files" error the action will go on.
You can also use JSON or YAML arrays (e.g. '["first", "second"]', "['first', 'second']") to make the action run multiple git add commands: the action will log how your input has been parsed. Please mind that your input still needs to be a string because of how GitHub Actions works with inputs: just write your array inside the string, the action will parse it later.
You can delete files with the remove option: that runs a git rm command that will stage the files in the given path for removal. As with the add argument, you can use every option git rm allows (e.g. add --force to ignore .gitignore rules).
The script will not stop if one of the git commands doesn't match any file. E.g.: if your command shows a "fatal: pathspec 'yourFile' did not match any files" error the action will go on.
You can also use JSON or YAML arrays (e.g. '["first", "second"]', "['first', 'second']") to make the action run multiple git rm commands: the action will log how your input has been parsed. Please mind that your input still needs to be a string because of how GitHub Actions works with inputs: just write your array inside the string, the action will parse it later.
By default the action runs the following command: git push origin ${branch input} --set-upstream. You can use the push input to modify this behavior, here's what you can set it to:
true: this is the default value, it will behave as usual.false: this prevents the action from pushing at all, nogit pushcommand is run.- any other string:
The action will use your string as the arguments for thegit pushcommand. Please note that nothing is used other than your arguments, and the command will result ingit push ${push input}(no remote, no branch, no--set-upstream, you have to include them yourself).
One way to use this is if you want to force push to a branch of your repo: you'll need to set the push input to, for example, origin yourBranch --force.
You can use the tag option to enter the arguments for a git add command. In order for the action to isolate the tag name from the rest of the arguments, it should be the first word not preceded by an hyphen (e.g. -a tag-name -m "some other stuff" is ok).
When pushing, the action uses the token that the local git repository has been configured with: that means that if you want to change it you'll need to do it in the steps that run before this action. For example: if you set up your repo with actions/checkout then you have to add the token there.
Changing the token with which the repo is configured can be useful if you want to run CI checks on the commit pushed by this action; anyway, it has to be set up outside of this action.
The action automatically gets the GitHub token from a github_token input: this input should not be modified by the user, since it doesn't affect the commits as it's only used to access the GitHub API to get user info, in case they selected that option for the commit author.
The token you use when setting up the repo with this action will determine what token add-and-commit will use.
Some users reported that they were getting an error:
> fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address
If you're getting this error and you're using actions/checkout@v1, try upgrading to actions/checkout@v2. If you're still having problems after upgrading, feel free to open an issue. Issue ref: #146
The action provides these outputs:
committed: whether the action has created a commit ('true'or'false')pushed: whether the action has pushed to the remote ('true'or'false')tagged: whether the action has created a tag ('true'or'false')
For more info on how to use outputs, see "Context and expression syntax".
If you don't want to use your GitHub username for the CI commits, you can use the default_author option to make it appear as if it was made by "github-actions"
on: push
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v7
with:
default_author: github_actionsYou can also use the committer_name and committer_email inputs to make it appear as if GitHub Actions is the committer, here are a couple of example steps:
- uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v7
with:
message: Show GitHub Actions logo
committer_name: GitHub Actions
committer_email: actions@github.com
- uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v7
with:
message: Show GitHub logo
committer_name: GitHub Actions
committer_email: 41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.comDo you want to lint your JavaScript files, located in the src folder, with ESLint, so that fixable changes are done without your intervention? You can use a workflow like this:
name: Lint source code
on: push
jobs:
run:
name: Lint with ESLint
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout repo
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Set up Node.js
uses: actions/setup-node@v1
with:
node-version: 12.x
- name: Install dependencies
run: npm install
- name: Update source code
run: eslint "src/**" --fix
- name: Commit changes
uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v7
with:
author_name: Your Name
author_email: mail@example.com
message: 'Your commit message'
add: '*.js'If you need to run the action on a repository that is not located in $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, you can use the cwd option: the action uses a cd normal command, so the path should follow bash standards.
name: Use a different repository directory
on: push
jobs:
run:
name: Add a text file
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# If you need to, you can check out your repo to a different location
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
with:
path: './pathToRepo/'
# You can make whatever type of change to the repo...
- run: echo "123" > ./pathToRepo/file.txt
# ...and then use the action as you would normally do, but providing the path to the repo
- uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v7
with:
message: 'Add the very useful text file'
add: '*.txt --force'
cwd: './pathToRepo/'Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):
This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!
This action is distributed under the MIT license, check the license for more info.