PRs created don't trigger other actions

[abatilo]

It seems that any PRs that get created by this action will not trigger any actions waiting on a pull request event, which means that you can have any required status checks.

Any ideas for how to get around this?

[peter-evans]

This is a deliberate limitation imposed by GitHub Actions that an action cannot trigger other workflows. From the documentation:

An action in a workflow run can't trigger a new workflow run. For example, if an action pushes code using the repository's GITHUB_TOKEN, a new workflow will not run even when the repository contains a workflow configured to run when push events occur.

https://help.github.com/en/articles/events-that-trigger-workflows#example-using-more-than-one-event

I'm not sure if there are any work arounds. I guess you would need another event to trigger the additional workflow.

[peter-evans]

I've found a work around. It looks like GitHub are determining that API calls are coming from actions by checking the authentication token. If you use a repo scoped token instead of the default GITHUB_TOKEN then the on: pull_request workflow will run checks against the created pull request.

Create a repo scoped token at https://github.com/settings/tokens and then add it as a secret to the repository your workflow runs in. It will be under https://github.com/[username]/[repo]/settings/secrets

Use that secret in your workflow and assign it to the environment variable GITHUB_TOKEN.

    - name: Create Pull Request
      uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v1.3.1
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.REPO_SCOPED_TOKEN }}

There is a downside to this method. The PR is no longer created by the github-actions bot user and instead appears to be created by the user associated with the token.

[peter-evans]

I contacted GitHub about this issue and their response confirms that using a personal token as I outlined above is the correct approach.

From GitHub Support:

This is a deliberate decision by the Actions team in order to prevent accidental "infinite loop" situations, and as an anti-abuse measure.
You will be able to work around this using a Personal Access Token in place of the provided token. As this needs to be explicitly provided it will remove any potential for possible abuse, so we recommend using this method when needing to create a pull request.

[Mike-E-angelo]

Ah what a pain. Resorting to a token that applies to every repository of the user without being able to scope specifically to the desired repository is quite the security concern.

(My complaints are to GitHub, not this repo BUT SOMEONE MUST HEAR ME AS I SHOUT POWERLESS INTO THE VOID!! 😅)

[Mike-E-angelo]

Hey all, check it out... another possible workaround is to use an on.schedule.cron trigger as discussed here:

pascalgn/automerge-action#37 (comment)

Here's my (sample/testing 😁) configuration:

https://github.com/ExtendedXmlSerializer/NextRelease/blob/959614d9e72c08f80d7e71a0e52265a42ed91c75/.github/workflows/automerge.yml#L25-L30

Not as elegant as a direct trigger, but certainly better than having to resort to a Personal Access Token.

Thought I'd share. 👍