Allow reusable workflows to be located at arbitrary locations and be local

[umarcor]

Although the documentation does not specify the limitation, it seems that reusable workflows must be located in .github/workflows. Moreover, specifying the version is necessary. Therefore, it is not possible to have a reusable workflow in the current branch.

See

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/reusing-workflows#calling-a-reusable-workflow
You reference reusable workflow files using the syntax:

{owner}/{repo}/{path}/{filename}@{ref}

and

https://github.com/hdl/containers/actions/runs/1469619022

invalid value workflow reference: references to workflows must be rooted in '.github/workflows'

and

https://github.com/hdl/containers/actions/runs/1469617309

invalid value workflow reference: no version specified

It would be desirable if the syntax was changed to [{owner}/{repo}/]{path}/{filename}.yml[@{ref}].

Refs:

• Allow reusable workflows to be located at arbitrary locations and be local actions/runner#1493
• https://github.community/t/allow-reusable-workflows-to-be-located-at-arbitrary-locations-and-be-local/212745
• https://github.community/t/ref-head-in-reusable-workflows/203690/10
• GitHub Actions: Feedback to reusable workflows #8311
• Allow GitHub Actions matrix exclusions to take an array #7835 (comment)

[PathogenDavid]

In another community thread, @jenschelkopf shared that they're working on something similar to this:

Hi everyone. I’m the product manager for reusable workflows. Today, you have to provide the full, static path and ref for the reusable workflow. We don’t evaluate any expressions.

We do plan to support this at some point, and I’ll update this thread when we do.

And later in the thread:

[...]
It will likely look a lot like referencing a local action, but without the need to do a checkout first
[...]

As far as I'm aware there's no public roadmap item for this yet.

[jenschelkopf]

Hi @umarcor and @PathogenDavid, we just released the ability to reference a local reusable workflow: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-01-25-github-actions-reusable-workflows-can-be-referenced-locally

[PathogenDavid]

Thanks a lot for getting this feature added! Just tried it out in my test repo and it works great!

[umarcor]

@jenschelkopf is {path} still hardcoded to .github/workflows?

[Hazmi35]

Hello, sorry for the bump, any updates regarding this?

[PathogenDavid]

This has been completed since January, see this blog post for details.

[umarcor]

@PathogenDavid the title of this discussion starts with "Allow reusable workflows to be located at arbitrary locations". Do you know whether that's supported already? Ref: https://github.com/orgs/github-community/discussions/9050#discussioncomment-2167487

[PathogenDavid]

@umarcor My bad, can confirm that workflow files still have to be in the .github/workflows folder. I wasn't paying enough attention to the specific thread I was in.

[jdogmcsteezy]

Still looking forward to being able to reference a workflow from and path. It would allow us to reference submodule workflows. Our current workaround (because they are public repos) is to reference the workflow using [{owner}/{repo}//{filename}.yml[@{ref}] but needing to specify the ref can be quite tedious when making changes to the submodule workflow

[o-kasian]

Is this available in GitHub Enterprise, and if so - what version?

[aciokler]

Doesn't seem like it is.

[moritzluedtke]

I can confirm that as of today we still need to put reusable workflows into .github/workflows and nowhere else. I don't see why it was implemented that way, because we already need to give the exact path to the workflow file in the jobs uses segment. An explanation from GitHub would be much appreciated.

[vladimirevstratov]

it will be a great feature!

[doubleforte]

We are also hoping for a way to structure our workflow dir so we could have something like:

├── .github
│   └── workflows
│       ├── main.yml
│       └── shared
│           ├── reuse-this-elsewhere.yml
│           └── reuse-this-one-too.yml

... or even better, not require them to be in the .github or workflows dir at all ...

├── reusable-workflow
│   ├── reuse-this-elsewhere.yml
│   └── reuse-this-one-too.yml

[mnadher]

Do they have any plan for implementing this in future ?

[gabrielsclimaco]

Any news on this?

[aciokler]

Much needed feature. Please implement. thanks

[romeuhcf]

It would be great if we could do something like:

jobs:
  build-images:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        target: [frontend, backend]
    uses: myorg/myproj-${{ matrix.target }}/.github/workflows/build.yml@main

[umarcor]

@romeuhcf I believe that's a different feature request. It's about allowing variables in the uses field, not about the arbitrary location of workflows in the repos. See https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/9049 instead.

Ref: hdl/containers#48

[elijaholmos]

Well, I stumbled upon a seemingly stupid restriction: reusable workflows, if located in an external repository, cannot be located in a repository called ".github". I say this is stupid, because it would seem natural to place code common to all repositories within an org/user inside the special .github repository.

The following error is yieled by GH actions when I attempt to place a reusable workflow in my elijaholmos/.github repo:

However, moving the workflow to a separate repository with any other name (elijaholmos/elijaholmos in this case), the action runs without problems:

Both repos as well as their actions logs are public, so feel free to peruse for more information.

[jcbhmr]

actually it's because the path there is:

elijaholmos/.github/workflows/pull-request-title.yml@main
👇
elijaholmos/.github | workflows/pull-request-title.yml | main

which is NOT a repo with a .github/workflows/* yml file.

instead, just make sure that you do this:

elijaholmos/.github | .github/workflows/pull-request-title.yml | main
👇
elijaholmos/.github/.github/workflows/pull-request-title.yml@main

which should work

[elijaholmos]

alas, @jcbhmr, this does work- thank you for your help! The redundancy is still dumb, although I suppose that is included in the above discussions.

[umarcor]

@elijaholmos that's precisely what "to be located at arbitrary locations" means in the title 😉.

[n3dst4]

My use case is that I have a subrepo (like a submodule but better) for a lot of shared code. I would like to be able to reference reusable workflows by arbitrary relative path to get the version that's in the shared subrepo. At the moment I have to use the repo link and remember to update the {ref} when needed.

[TechnicallyJoe]

We're moving from Azure DevOps to GitHub. In ADO we have an extensive library of pipeline templates that you are free to organize however you want. The limitation that your reusable workflow has to be in .github/workflows seems very odd.

Any news on this?

[PaulRBerg]

This limitation makes it difficult to use GitHub Actions to test GitHub Actions itself.

We have a repo with reusable workflows that has grown big over time, and the workflows are currently defined under .github/workflows.

Now, we would like to add some CI checks for the reusable workflows. While we can do this, it's a bit misleading to put the production code and the test code under the same roof.

Any ETA for when this basic functionality will be supported?

[borhara]

Any news on this?