actions / actions/runner

[BUG] Composite actions should be provisioned with `ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN` just like the node and docker ones

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#3,046 6 comments 21 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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bug
Dominant language
C#
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Currently, ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN is exposed to nodejs and docker action types, but not the composite ones. So accessing it is rather limited to 2/3 types of the action types. It's not a private implementation detail and GitHub's own docs even show accessing it through the normal JS env var interface (process.env): https://docs.github.com/en/actions/deployment/security-hardening-your-deployments/configuring-openid-connect-in-cloud-providers#requesting-the-jwt-using-environment-variables. There's also no recommendations not to use it, it's rather undocumented that it's surprisingly inaccessible from within non-actions and composite actions.

Which is why I think it's actually a bug that got overlooked, unintentionally vendor-locking the action authors to docker or nodejs. It shouldn't be like this so I'm filing this issue to ask this (and related) env vars to be exposed to all action types equally.

The other action implementations set the env var like this:

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by comparing the environment setup in src/Runner.Worker/Handlers/NodeScriptActionHandler.cs and ContainerActionHandler.cs at the referenced locations, then locate the corresponding composite-action handling path. Confirm which runtime environment variables are provisioned for composite actions and verify that the requested token, along with any related variables in scope, is exposed consistently.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp, github-actions
Domain
ci-cd
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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