Github action-build: Error when executing /usr/bin/sudo

[prex]

I wanted to try the snapcore Github action-build to automate building of my private repositories. Since I have a little bit of a complicated repository configuration and the snapcraft.yaml is actually in another repository, I need to clone it first. I thought this wouldn’t make any difference as long as I use the correct project path. However, I’m getting the following error during the “Run snapcore/action-build@v1”:

Installing LXD… /usr/bin/sudo snap install lxd lxd 4.0.0 from Canonical* installed /usr/bin/sudo lxd init --auto Installing Snapcraft… /usr/bin/sudo snap install --classic snapcraft snapcraft 3.11 from Canonical* installed /usr/bin/sudo --preserve-env=SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_ENVIRONMENT,SNAPCRAFT_BUILD_INFO,SNAPCRAFT_IMAGE_INFO snapcraft ##[error]There was an error when attempting to execute the process ‘/usr/bin/sudo’. This may indicate the process failed to start. Error: spawn /usr/bin/sudo ENOENT

I’m not sure if this is caused by my configuration or something else. This is my action workflow:

name: snapcraft

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Clone my private repo 
      run: |
        mkdir -p ~/tc_ws/src
        cd ~/tc_ws/src
        git clone https://${{ secrets.TOKEN }}@github.com/organization/myRepo.git
        // Replacing some Github URLs in my rosinstall file
        sed -i 's|git@github\.com:|https://${{ secrets.TOKEN }}@github\.com/|g' ~/tc_ws/src/myRepo/snap/local/snap.rosinstall
    - uses: snapcore/action-build@v1
      with:
        path: ~/tc_ws/src/myRepo

The snapcraft.yaml is located at ~/tc_ws/src/myRepo/snap/snapcraft.yaml.

I’m sorry that I can’t provide any minimal example to test this. Any ideas @jamesh?

[jamesh]

It is a bit hard to tell without seeing a log, but my guess is that the problem is the path parameter passed to the action:

    - uses: snapcore/action-build@v1
      with:
        path: ~/tc_ws/src/myRepo

Presumably nothing is expanding the ~ in the path. This means we have an invalid path giving the ENOENT error. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to add manual tilde expansion into the action, although this is a fairly niche use case: the normal workflow would be to check out your repo into $GITHUB_WORKSPACE.

Until the action is updated, here are two work arounds:

1. Pass the full path repository path in the path parameter. Looking at the docs, it looks like you could replace ~ with /github/home.

2. Check out your project to $GITHUB_WORKSPACE (i.e. the current working directory your job is running in). Unless you’ve got a good reason to do otherwise, I would suggest using the actions/checkout@v2 action to do this. You can configure it to use an alternative access token through it’s token parameter, as described in its documentation.

[jamesh]

I’ve filed a bug report so I don’t forget about this:

tilde should be expanded to $HOME in path input parameter

[prex]

@jamesh

Pass the full path repository path in the path parameter. Looking at the docs, it looks like you could replace ~ with /github/home .

This didn’t work. I’m not sure if this tilde is even supported by Github actions?

@jamesh

Check out your project to $GITHUB_WORKSPACE (i.e. the current working directory your job is running in). Unless you’ve got a good reason to do otherwise, I would suggest using the actions/checkout@v2 action to do this. You can configure it to use an alternative access token through it’s token parameter, as described in its documentation.

This did the job.

[jamesh]

As far as Github Actions runner is concerned, input parameters to actions are just strings. As I said before, tilde expansion is not a kernel feature (since the kernel has no concept of home directories). It’s something that individual applications might choose to implement.

And I agreed that it would be a good idea for this action to implement it for the path input parameter.