How do I change where a GitHub Action runs?

[rfalanga]

Today I created my first GitHub Action using a template for ASP.NET Core. It performs a build on the main branch, which at this point is all I'm interested in doing. However, it failed with a "MSB1003: Specify a project or solution file" error message in the dotnet restore step. I'm certain it's an issue of the build not running in the directory where the .csproj file exists. So, I see two possible solutions.

• cd into the folder where the .csproj file is
• direct the build to run where the .csproj file is located.

My question is which is most often done and how do I do it?

[airtower-luna]

Each run step gets a fresh shell, so cd only works if you do it within the same step.

The alternative is to set working-directory for your run step:

- run: your command here
  working-directory: run/here/

You can also set a default working directory for all run steps in the job.

[rfalanga]

Setting the default working directory did the trick. Thank you very much!

[ivansholokh]

yep, thanks. Here is sample code block:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    defaults:
      run:
        working-directory: {my-dir}