Add & Commit
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.
Usage
Add a step like this to your workflow:
- uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v4 # 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: author of the commit that triggered the run
author_name: Your Name
# The email of the user that will be displayed as the author of the commit
# Default: author of the commit that triggered the run
author_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'
# Whether to use the --force option on `git add`, in order to bypass eventual gitignores
# Default: false
force: true
# The message for the commit
# Default: 'Commit from GitHub Actions'
message: 'Your commit message'
# Name of the branch to use, if different from the one that triggered the workflow
# Default: the branch that triggered the workflow (from GITHUB_REF)
ref: 'someOtherBranch'
# The arguments for the `git rm` command (see the paragraph below for more info)
# Default: ''
remove: "./dir/old_file.js"
# Name of the tag to add to the new commit. Use an empty string to disable tagging.
# Default: ''
tag: "v1.0.0"
env:
# This is necessary in order to push a commit to the repo
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # Leave this line unchanged
Environment variables:
The only env variable required is the token for the action to run: GitHub generates one automatically, but you need to pass it through env to make it available to actions. You can find more about GITHUB_TOKEN here.
That said, you can just copy the example line and not worry about it. If you do want to use a different token you can pass that in, but I wouldn't see any possible advantage in doing so.
Adding files:
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 don't want it to use a recursive behavior: $(find . -maxdepth 1 -name *.js).
The script will not stop if one of the git commands fails. E.g.: if your command shows a "fatal: pathspec 'yourFile' did not match any files" error the action will go on.
Deleting files:
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.
The script will not stop if one of the git commands fails. E.g.: if your command shows a "fatal: pathspec 'yourFile' did not match any files" error the action will go on.
Examples:
Do 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@v4
with:
author_name: Your Name
author_email: mail@example.com
message: "Your commit message"
add: "*.js"
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
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@v4
with:
message: "Add the very useful text file"
add: "*.txt"
cwd: "./pathToRepo/"
force: true
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
License
This action is distributed under the MIT license, check the license for more info.