Action fails on empty repo or when the specific file pattern is not found

[DanielRejniak]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Does this issue exist in the latest version?

• I'm using the latest release

Describe the bug?

I found several issues with the tj-actions/changed-files action, those are especially predominant when the repository is empty. Bellow are two scenarios that I reproduced on my private dummy repo for the purpose of demonstration.

Actions : tj-actions/changed-files
Version : v35.5.1

name: test-changes
on: push
jobs:
  test-changes:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:     
      
      # Checkout the current branch
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with: 
          fetch-depth: 0
      
      - name: Get changed yaml's
        uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v35.5.1
        with:
          json: "true"
          files: |
            test_dir/**/*.yaml

To Reproduce

Issue One

This appears to happen on brand new repo when there was no previous commits.

See job failures : https://github.com/DanielRejniak/tj-actions-bug-replication/actions/runs/4134902304/jobs/7146633425

Issue Two

After I made a dummy commit the repo now has previous commits. I then re-run the workflow and and I use a glob pattern of test_dir/**/*.yaml as Im only interested in those files. However the action fails saying that No paths found using the specified patterns.

See job failures : https://github.com/DanielRejniak/tj-actions-bug-replication/actions/runs/4134958441/jobs/7146768376

What OS are you seeing the problem on?

all

Expected behavior?

I would have expected the list of changes to be empty in both cases. In the first case the repo is blank there are no changes so I should recieve an empty list. In the second case the repo has commit's but no files that Im looking for so again I should recieve empty list of changed files.

Relevant log output

Issue One Log

Run tj-actions/changed-files@v35.5.1
Run # "Calculating the previous and current SHA..."
changed-files-diff-sha
  Verifying git version...
  Valid git version found: (2.39.1)
  Running on a push event...
  fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD~1': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
  Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
  'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'
  fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD~1': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
  Error: Unable to locate a previous commit.
  Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
  'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'
  Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

Issue Two Log

Run tj-actions/changed-files@v35.5.1
Run # "Calculating the previous and current SHA..."
changed-files-diff-sha
Run tj-actions/glob@v16
/usr/bin/git rev-parse --show-toplevel
/home/runner/work/tj-actions-bug-replication/tj-actions-bug-replication
/usr/bin/git diff --diff-filter=D --name-only 91b75eba4f9c38e09c039d4920d3571b71786f72..00421671d4b77b8e9183928f7fc68bb652593592
Error: No paths found using the specified patterns

Anything else?

No response

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[github-actions]

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[jackton1]

Hi @DanielRejniak I believe Issue 1 has been fixed, and Issue 2 is an expected outcome to prevent potential misconfigured patterns

[s4nji]

We are using tj-actions/changed-files@v16 (which uses tj-actions/glob@v7) to detect if there are any .go files changed in a given pull-request:

    - id: golang-changed
      uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v16
      with:
        files: |
          **/*.go
        files_ignore: |
          **/vendor/**

    - if: steps.golang-changed.outputs.any_changed == 'true'
      ...

This is working, but now fails in the latest version with Error: No paths found using the specified patterns.
Looks like tj-actions/glob#625 and tj-actions/glob#626 are the exact point when this stopped working as you linked above.

I still think this is a valid use-case for the action. Could perhaps a toggle be added to not throw an error if there's no match or changed files?
At the moment looks like any_changed output is rendered unusable/useless, since files input must be defined to use it, therefore currently it either returns true, or the action fails.

Note: I think this relates to #992 as well

[jackton1]

This has been resolved and would be released momentarily. Going forward patterns not matching any files would result in a warning.

cc: @s4nji, @DanielRejniak