Debugging GitHub Actions

I had a workflow glued together, but couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t work. As I know very little about action and YML notation, I ask a co-worker if he would have some time to look over it.

There were the issues we fixed together.

• add extension to file name *yml
• Remove : from label. Use –
• Enclose if-clause in ${{ curly brackets }}
• Instead of > use | in Body
• Indentation is important

Before you can test things, you would need GitHub to actually run the action, and that only happens when a file has the *yml extension.

Note: The label that should trigger the workflow can have a colon in the name, that comes out as a syntax error with yml notation. It’s a bit odd that a little : would cause so much trouble. Here is a discussion calling it a GitHub Bug. I haven’t tested the workarounds suggested yet, though.

Changed the label from “flow: ready to publish” to “flow-ready to publish”

The example code didn’t enclose the if-clause in brackets.

Before:

if: github.event.label.name == 'flow: ready to publish'

After

 if: ${{ github.event.label.name == 'flow-ready to publish' }}

The original code used > to start the comment BODY. GitHub uses | instead.

YML is also finicky with indentation.

Instead of this code

  BODY: >### Pre-publishing checklist: (updated 12/09/2024)
- [ ] Post Title and subheaders in sentence case

It’s correct to use this:

  BODY: | 
        ### Pre-publishing checklist
        - [ ] Post Title and subheaders in sentence case

The | (pipe) and the start of the new lines need to line up to display correctly in the resulting comment.

Also tested:

• You can do Markdown heading ###
• You can use Emojis and links.

The resulting code is now available on GitHub and works.