actions / actions/toolkit

GITHUB_PATH always takes precedence over GITHUB_ENV

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bug external
Dominant language
TypeScript
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Description

The docs for environment files say that you can write a key-value
pair to ${GITHUB_ENV} to “[update] an environment variable for any
actions running next in a job”. But this has an undesirable interaction
with the ${GITHUB_PATH} environment file: old GITHUB_PATH entries
are still included even after GITHUB_ENV is used to reset the variable
contents.

For instance, in this example…

    - run: echo '/some/path/dir' >>"${GITHUB_PATH}"
    - run: echo 'PATH=/usr/bin:/bin' >>"${GITHUB_ENV}"
    - run: echo "$PATH"

…we would expect the last step to print /usr/bin:/bin, because that
is the environment variable that has been explicitly set. But instead it
prints /some/path/dir:/usr/bin:/bin, using the path entries that were
prepended before the variable was cleared.

This is problematic because it makes it impossible to reset PATH after
a previous step has echoed to GITHUB_PATH. Specifically, I want to use
the setup-python action to configure a Python toolchain, then create a
virtualenv, and then remove the stock Python toolchain from the path—but
since setup-python uses ${GITHUB_PATH}, there is no way to do this.

(As a user, it’s hard to tell what part of the platform is responsible
for this behavior and whether that code is open source. I’ve filed
against this repository because setup-python uses core.addPath and
thus runs into this issue. If this isn’t the right place, please advise
me where I should file an issue instead. Thanks!)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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 at the core.addPath entry point and the linked environment-files documentation, then compare how setup-python writes GITHUB_PATH with later GITHUB_ENV updates. Determine whether this repository owns the behavior or whether it belongs to the GitHub Actions platform; done means identifying the responsible component and the expected reset behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
github-actions, typescript
Domain
ci-cd
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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