GitHub Actions pass list of variables to shell script

Question

Using GitHub Actions, I would like to invoke a shell script with a list of directories. (Essentially equivalent to passing an Ansible vars list to the shell script)

I don't really know how, is this even possible? Here's what I have until now, how could one improve this?

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

    tags:
      - v*

  pull_request:

jobs:
  run-script:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Run script on targets
        run: ./.github/workflows/script.sh {{ targets }}
        env:
          targets:
            - FolderA/SubfolderA/
            - FolderB/SubfolderB/

I don't think you can set arrays in the environment. For what you show, you could just insert the strings directly in the run: field; where do you really get the targets from? — Benjamin W.
– Benjamin W., Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 17:33
One option could be to use the join function with a blank, but that requires that your directory names don't contain blanks. — Benjamin W.
– Benjamin W., Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 17:34
That's no problem, folders don't contain blanks. Would I be able to specify the path to the subfolders separately from the run ? — Mihai Galos
– Mihai Galos, Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 17:36
For a robust solution, you could use a separate step where you set the directories and then reference them in your "Run script on targets" step. The previous step could write to a temporary file, or set an output with a JSON object to then reference... — Benjamin W.
– Benjamin W., Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 17:44

Aaron Meese · Accepted Answer · 2022-07-09 01:12:48Z

4

Today I was able to do this with the following YAML (truncated):

...
with:
  targets: |
    FolderA/SubfolderA
    FolderB/SubfolderB

The actual GitHub Action passes this as an argument like the following:

runs:
  using: docker
  image: Dockerfile
  args:
    - "${{ inputs.targets }}"

What this does is simply sends the parameters as a string with the newline characters embedded, which can then be iterated over similar to an array in a POSIX-compliant manner via the following shell code:

#!/bin/sh -l

targets="${1}"

for target in $targets
do
  echo "Proof that this code works: $target"
done

Which should be capable of accomplishing your desired task, if I understand the question correctly. You can always run something like sh ./script.sh $target in the loop if your use case requires it.

answered Jul 9, 2022 at 1:12

Aaron Meese

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2 Comments

Mihai Galos Over a year ago

Hi Aaron, do you have a successful run in i.e. a public shareable GitHub action so as I can verify and approve your answer? The second option involving a loop doesn't address the problem fully, since 2 independent runs might run correctly but 2 dependent runs might not (depending on your core logic.)

Aaron Meese Over a year ago

@MihaiGalos sure! I just actually finished a GitHub Action repository today that depends on this logic, you can see a successful run of it here: github.com/meese-enterprises/meeseOS/runs/…. Let me know if you can't see it!

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