Trying to work out why action is triggered three times for release?

Code to Cloud GitHub Actions
#1

I am trying to put together an action to create artefacts to attach to a new release, but I am running into an issue. If I create a new release in the GitHub UI of the form ‘v3.1.5’, then I find the action is fired off three times, but I am not sure why. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong:

on:
  release:
    type: [created]
    # Sequence of patterns matched against refs/tags
    tags:
    - 'v*' # Push events to matching v*, i.e. v1.0, v20.15.10

name: Upload Release Asset

jobs:
  release:
    name: Upload Release Asset
    runs-on: macos-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - name: Get dependencies
        run: git submodule update --init --recursive
      - name: Build the project
        run: xcodebuild -derivedDataPath ./build -workspace Boxer.xcworkspace -scheme "Boxer CI" -configuration "Release"
      - name: Package the release artefacts
        run: |
          hdiutil create -volname Boxer -srcfolder build/Build/Products/Release/Boxer.app -ov -format UDZO Boxer.dmg
      - name: Create Release
        id: create_release
        uses: actions/create-release@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          tag_name: ${{ github.ref }}
          release_name: Release ${{ github.ref }}
          draft: false
          prerelease: false
      - name: Upload Release Asset
        id: upload-release-asset
        uses: actions/upload-release-asset@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          upload_url: ${{ steps.create_release.outputs.upload_url }} # This pulls from the CREATE RELEASE step above, referencing it's ID to get its outputs object, which include a `upload_url`. See this blog post for more info: https://jasonet.co/posts/new-features-of-github-actions/#passing-data-to-future-steps
          asset_path: ./Boxer.dmg
          asset_name: Boxer.dmg
          asset_content_type: application/x-apple-diskimage
#2

Well two makes sense, not sure about the third, likely a chain reaction that some Github Actions control is stopping.

Your workflow triggers on Release creation but then creates a release itself via actions/create-release@v1.

#3

I hadn’t noticed that. I have changed that code block in mine.

A closer look shows that three are triggered by ‘published’, ‘prereleased’ and ‘created’. I would have thought the ‘type’ field above would have limited the condition to ‘created’ only?

My config is here: https://github.com/ajmas/Boxer/tree/worflow-test

Update: it turns out it was a question of ‘type’ vs ‘types’.

1 Like
#4

Is this action supposed to be fired when both a release event is created and the tag starts with ‘v’?

I use the same syntax in my script, but it is triggered regardless of the tag name.

#5

The release event doesn’t support filtering by tag name according to the docs. Only push and pull_request do:
on.<push|pull_request>.<branches|tags>

The correct name for the event filter is types:
on.<event_name>.types
If you specify type instead, then it’s simply ignored and all default event types will trigger the workflow.