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MajorAtmosphere
MajorAtmosphere

Reputation: 41

GitHub Actions GIT_BRANCH environment variable

I have a GitHub action running my unit tests for a web app. I run CodeClimate test reporting from this action.

CodeClimate requires two environment variables to be set for the report to be correctly sent. These are;

GitHub actions makes the git commit sha avaiable through the github context via github.sha so I can set an environment variable on the action like this;

env:
    GIT_SHA: ${{ github.sha }}

However github actions does not make the branch name available.

It does provide a default environment variable called GITHUB_REF this is the full ref but I understand that I can grab the short ref i.e. the branch name using this shorthand syntax $GITHUB_REF##*/

The problem I have is that I cannot set an env variable called GITHUB_BRANCH with this value $GITHUB_REF##*/

Does anyone how I might get the branch name and set it to the environment variable GIT_BRANCH so the CodeClimate test script would be able to use it.

Ultimately I want my env config to look like this:

env:
    GIT_SHA: <git commit sha>
    GIT_BRANCH: <current git branch>

Upvotes: 2

Views: 10651

Answers (2)

Sergio Arroutbi
Sergio Arroutbi

Reputation: 31

Indeed, rather than using GITHUB_REF, it could be useful to use GITHUB_HEAD_REF or GITHUB_BASE_REF to figure out the real branch names (above all, if workflow is associated to a PR):

Examples of output:

    GITHUB_REF="refs/pull/4/merge"
    GITHUB_BASE_REF="main"
    GITHUB_HEAD_REF="key_advertisement"

More information here: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/contexts#github-context

Upvotes: 3

Marcin Kłopotek
Marcin Kłopotek

Reputation: 5961

Ultimately I want my env config to look like this:

env:
   GIT_SHA: <git commit sha>
   GIT_BRANCH: <current git branch>

You can achieve the same effect (setting the environment variables) not only in the workflow definition but by setting the variables dynamically in a dedicated workflow step. You can do it by environment files and built-in GITHUB_SHA and GITHUB_BRANCH variables:

jobs:
  set-env:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Set environment variables
        run: |
          echo "GIT_SHA=${GITHUB_SHA}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
          echo "GIT_BRANCH=${GITHUB_REF##*/}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
      - name: Use environment variables
        run: |
          echo "GIT_SHA=${GIT_SHA}"
          echo "GIT_BRANCH=${GIT_BRANCH}"

Executing the workflow should give you the output:

enter image description here

Upvotes: 9

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