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I use tmate[1] to get a shell on the worker when I need to debug things interactively. Also act[2] lets you run a decent approximation of your actions locally.

I use tmate[1] to get a shell on the worker when I need to debug things interactively. Also act[2] lets you run a decent approximation of your actions locally. Still agree that it should be easier and not require third-party tools/actions, though. [1]: https://github.com/mxschmitt/action-tmate https://github.com/mxschmitt/action-tmate [2]: https://github.com/nektos/act https://github.com/nektos/act

jrochkind1 5y ago
action-tmate... woah!
karlicoss 5y ago
Yeah, the only downside of tmate is that you need to add/uncomment the line with it, push, then remove the commit again. It's much nicer in circleci, for example where you can simply rerun wish SSH in a button click. Even better would be if the VM was around for a bit after failing, so I could connect and inspect the state without rerunning at all.
- degraafc 5y ago
  Yep, definitely agree. I feel like there are a lot of areas that GitHub Actions needs improvements to catch up to other CI providers, really basic-seeming stuff like "allow failure" support and so on.
- horse666 5y ago
  One approach to avoid this karlicoss is to add a “workflow dispatch” section to the “on” events in the workflow: workflow_dispatch: inputs: debug_enabled: description: 'Run the build with tmate debugging enabled (https://github.com/marketplace/actions/debugging-with-tmate)' required: false default: false Then under the job steps, make the debug step conditional on that optional flag: # Enable tmate debugging of manually-triggered workflows if the input option was provided - name: Setup tmate session uses: mxschmitt/action-tmate@v3 if: ${{ github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && github.event.inputs.debug_enabled }} You then can just trigger the build on the required branch, setting debug_enabled to true and voila. Edit: but agree the CircleCI interface is nicer where you can just run a debug build with ssh access directly.
  - karlicoss 5y ago
    oh, nice trick, thanks!
    - horse666 5y ago
      Thought I'd get their docs updated - https://github.com/mxschmitt/action-tmate#manually-triggered-debug https://github.com/mxschmitt/action-tmate#manually-triggered...

jrochkind1 5y ago

action-tmate... woah!

karlicoss 5y ago

Yeah, the only downside of tmate is that you need to add/uncomment the line with it, push, then remove the commit again. It's much nicer in circleci, for example where you can simply rerun wish SSH in a button click. Even better would be if the VM was around for a bit after failing, so I could connect and inspect the state without rerunning at all.

degraafc 5y ago
Yep, definitely agree. I feel like there are a lot of areas that GitHub Actions needs improvements to catch up to other CI providers, really basic-seeming stuff like "allow failure" support and so on.
horse666 5y ago
One approach to avoid this karlicoss is to add a “workflow dispatch” section to the “on” events in the workflow: workflow_dispatch: inputs: debug_enabled: description: 'Run the build with tmate debugging enabled (https://github.com/marketplace/actions/debugging-with-tmate)' required: false default: false Then under the job steps, make the debug step conditional on that optional flag: # Enable tmate debugging of manually-triggered workflows if the input option was provided - name: Setup tmate session uses: mxschmitt/action-tmate@v3 if: ${{ github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && github.event.inputs.debug_enabled }} You then can just trigger the build on the required branch, setting debug_enabled to true and voila. Edit: but agree the CircleCI interface is nicer where you can just run a debug build with ssh access directly.
- karlicoss 5y ago
  oh, nice trick, thanks!
  - horse666 5y ago
    Thought I'd get their docs updated - https://github.com/mxschmitt/action-tmate#manually-triggered-debug https://github.com/mxschmitt/action-tmate#manually-triggered...