git-auto-commit Action

The GitHub Action for commiting files for the 80% use case.

This GitHub Action automatically commits files which have been changed during a Workflow run and pushes the commit back to GitHub.
The default committer is "GitHub Actions actions@github.com", and the default author of the commit is "Your GitHub Username github_username@users.noreply.github.com".

This Action has been inspired and adapted from the auto-commit-Action of the Canadian Digital Service and this commit-Action by Eric Johnson.

Usage

Add the following step at the end of your job, after the steps that actually change files.

- uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v4.1.6
  with:
    # Required
    commit_message: Apply automatic changes

    # Optional name of the branch the commit should be pushed to
    # Required for almost all non-`push` events, eg. `pull_request`, `schedule`
    branch: ${{ github.head_ref }}

    # Optional git params
    commit_options: '--no-verify --signoff'

    # Optional glob pattern of files which should be added to the commit
    file_pattern: src/*.js tests/*.js

    # Optional local file path to the repository
    repository: .

    # Optional commit user and author settings
    commit_user_name: My GitHub Actions Bot
    commit_user_email: my-github-actions-bot@example.org
    commit_author: Author <actions@github.com>

    # Optional tag message 
    # Action will create and push a new tag to the remote repository and the defined branch
    tagging_message: 'v1.0.0'

The Action will only commit if files have changed.

Limitations & Gotchas

Checkout the correct branch

You must use action/checkout@v2 or later versions to checkout the repository. In non-push events, such as pull_request, make sure to specify the ref to checkout:

- uses: actions/checkout@v2
  with:
    ref: ${{ github.head_ref }}

Specify the branch name

It is highly recommended to always specify the branch option explicitly. While the default setting works for push events, other events such as pull_request require it to work correctly.

This Action does not contain magic and can't easily determine to which branch a commit should be pushed to. 🔮.

Commits of this Action do not trigger new Workflow runs

The resulting commit will not trigger another GitHub Actions Workflow run. This is due to limititations set by GitHub.

When you use the repository's GITHUB_TOKEN to perform tasks on behalf of the GitHub Actions app, events triggered by the GITHUB_TOKEN will not create a new workflow run. This prevents you from accidentally creating recursive workflow runs.

You can change this by creating a new Personal Access Token (PAT), storing the token as a secret in your repository and then passing the new token to the actions/checkout Action.

- uses: actions/checkout@v2
  with:
    token: ${{ secrets.PAT_TOKEN }}

Unable to commit into PRs from forks

GitHub currently prohibits Actions like this to push commits to forks, even when they created a PR and allow edits. See issue #25 for more information.

Example

The most common use case for this Action is to create a new build of your project on GitHub Actions and commit the compiled files back to the repository. Another simple use case is to run automatic formatting and commit the fixes back to the repository.

In this example, we're running php-cs-fixer in a PHP project, let the linter fix possible code issues, then commit the changed files back to the repository.

Note that we explicitly specify ${{ github.head_ref }} in both the checkout and the commit Action. This is required in order to work with the pull_request event (or any other non-push event).

name: php-cs-fixer

on:
  pull_request:
  push:

jobs:
  php-cs-fixer:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      with:
        ref: ${{ github.head_ref }}

    - name: Run php-cs-fixer
      uses: docker://oskarstark/php-cs-fixer-ga

    - uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v4.1.6
      with:
        commit_message: Apply php-cs-fixer changes
        branch: ${{ github.head_ref }}

Inputs

Checkout action.yml for a full list of supported inputs.

Outputs

You can use these outputs to trigger other Actions in your Workflow run based on the result of git-auto-commit-action.

• changes_detected: Returns either "true" or "false" if the repository was dirty and files have changed.

Troubleshooting

Action does not push commit to repository

Make sure to checkout the correct branch and specify the branch name.

Action does not push commit to repository: Authentication Issue

If your Workflow can't push the commit to the repository because of authentication issues, please update your Workflow configuration and usage of actions/checkout.

Updating the token value with a Personal Access Token should fix your issues.

No new workflows are triggered by the commit of this action

This is due to limitations set up by GitHub, commits of this Action do not trigger new Workflow runs.

Versioning

We use SemVer for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.