if: is no shell, so no, running commands there is not supported. What you can do is set an environment variable or output variable in a previous step, and check that. Example with environment variable:

- name: check for changes
  run: |
    if git diff --exit-code; then
      echo "::set-env name=changes_exist::true"
    else
      echo "::set-env name=changes_exist::false"
    fi
- name: Commit and Push
  if: ${{ env.changes_exist == 'true' }}
  run: | 
    git add -u
    git commit -m "github-actions added date data"
    git push --force https://${GITHUB_ACTOR}:${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}@github.com/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY}.git HEAD:${REMOTE_BRANCH}

Also keep in mind that indentation is part of YAML syntax, uneven indentation like in your example might cause additional errors.

Hi Luna,

Thanks for the approach. I tried but still getting error:

    - name: check for changes
      run: |
        if git diff --exit-code; then
            echo "::set-env name=changes_exist::true"
        else
            echo "::set-env name=changes_exist::false"   
        fi
- name: Commit and Push Only if file updated
  if: env.changes_exist == 'true'
  run: |
    git add -u
    git commit -m "github-actions added date data"
    git push --force https://${GITHUB_ACTOR}:${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}@github.com/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY}.git HEAD:${REMOTE_BRANCH}

I tried many permutations and in one of those the step was actually skipped but job failed.

image814×921 41 KB

What am I missing here?

Thanks

No, dont be sorry. Programming with such things is confusing.

Thanks a lot, it worked.