@{ref} for nested workflows

[georg-eckert-zeiss]

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Hi there,

I have a repo that contains reusable workflows in .github/workflows/. To prevent failing workflows due to breaking changes I set tags to reference in my other repos.

Some of my reusable workflows call other workflows in the same repository. But as soon as I add a reference to the first one, the nested ones cannot be found anymore:

Example:

uses: ZEISS-PiWeb/github-actions/.github/workflows/create-support-release.yml@1.1.0

That one gets found. But the nested one not:

error parsing called workflow
".github/workflows/create-support-release.yml"
-> "ZEISS-PiWeb/github-actions/.github/workflows/create-support-release.yml@1.1.0" (source tag with sha:a675170a557afea4495f3126b4bfe270463db693)
--> "./.github/workflows/build-and-pack.yml"
: workflow was not found. See https://docs.github.com/actions/learn-github-actions/reusing-workflows#access-to-reusable-workflows for more information.

You can find that run here.

Is this not possible or am I doing something wrong?

Best regards.

PS: Related but not quite the same: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/31054

[airtower-luna]

A reusable workflow runs in the context of the repository from which it's called. So the locally called workflow ./.github/workflows/build-and-pack.yml would need to be available in your "PiWeb-Formplots" repository for that to work. I'd expect a call with repository name and ref to work.

[tonnenpinguin]

Piggybacking on this as for us it suddenly stopped working when using tags or branches. When referencing the sha it still works though 🤷

Our setup is pretty much the same as described by @georg-eckert-zeiss. Referencing a remote workflow that in turn references another workflow in the same repo.

[Paul-AUB]

Hello, we have the same issue on GitHub Enterprise 3.7. Works well using a branch or a SHA, but not a tag :'( That's really problematic as it is convenient to reference workflows with tags. Is it a known bug ? Or is it intended to work as it ?

[Paul-AUB]

I finally found out what is precisely the problem.

Well, in the GH doc it mentions that a release tag is needed, or a branch or a commit id.

The term release tag is inappropriate in the documentation, because we tested with a Git tag promoted in GitHub as a GitHub Release and it doesn't work better.

However, we figured out that if we use only a lightweight Git tag (rather than an annotated git tag), it works. So, as a result, for GitHub Workflows repositories, we need to avoid using annotated tags. This seem not possible to forbid as a configuration, so we need to be careful.

Anyway, GitHub doc is really confusing an not sufficient precise, which is too bad. Moreover, it is surprising that annotated tags doesn't work as their have more information inside. It seems that it such lack a resolution command... maybe could it be fixed in next version ?

[mr-git]

fun with inconsistency https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/4924 - looks like GH decided to fix Release tags, and broke workflow calling by tag :)

[mr-git]

my bad - I didn't notice that public repo cannot access workflow in internal repo (error was not clear enough for me).

[hlinero]

Thank you for the answer @Paul-AUB . I have spent hours trying to figure out why using a tag in the @{ref} did not work and, as you mentioned, it works with lightweight Git tags and not annotated Git tag, as I was using.

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