pathspec is not respected because of bash expansion

[alexgarel]

Version of the Action v4.14.1

Describe the bug I my workflow action, I am converting jupyter notebook to markdown. I want to commit all "md" files changed by previous steps in the repository If I use file_pattern: "*.md", according to pathspec, it should commit every ".md" file it the repository but it does not work.

This is due to the fact that I have a Threshold.md file at the root of my repository, so *.md is expanded to Threshold.md before being send to git command. I can reproduce it locally, if I use git status *.md, I only get status for Threshold.md, while if I use git status "*.md", I get status for all ".md" file in the repository.

I tried to use filepattern: "'*.md'" but it did not work. I think quotes are lost during evaluation to pass it in ENV variable ($INPUT_FILE_PATTERN)

To Reproduce

1. Create git repo with a structure:
   • a.md
   • subdir/b.md
2. Add a step that modifies those files by eg. appending some value.
3. Use the action to commit all md file with file_pattern: "*.md".
4. See that file are not commited.

Expected behavior I think the script should split $INPUT_FILE_PATTERN on spaces to get the different patterns in an array variable, then use quoting of arguments.

read -a INPUT_FILES <<< "$INPUT_FILE_PATTERN"
... (later on) ...
git status "${INPUT_FILES[@]}"
...
git add "${INPUT_FILES[@]}"

Used Workflow

See link above

[stefanzweifel]

Thanks for your feedback and idea for a solution to this problem.

You're correct that quotes are lost in translation between the YAML, the Bash script and Git. There's a previous discussion about this here: https://github.com/stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action/pull/196#pullrequestreview-841260255

In February I've opened a PR which tries to fix this; but I'm not sure why I haven't merged or worked more on this.

Will take a closer look on this in the upcoming days. It's time we close this problem for good.

[alexgarel]

Ok, good to know, I made suggestions on your PR :-)

[stefanzweifel]

@alexgarel Oh man. Thank you so much! ♥️ My bash knowledge is still so limited … even after all these years. Will review your comments in detail when I get the time.

[alexgarel]

Gentle ping

[stefanzweifel]

@alexgarel It's on my todo list. Currently a lot to do at my day-job and didn't had the energy to invest the time into this issue. I plan to tackle this tonight.

What I can alrady tell is that <<< didn't seem to work. More later today.

[stefanzweifel]

@alexgarel #205 has been updated with your suggestion. Could you give this version a try by updating your workflow to use:

- uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@refactor/expand-file-pattern

If this change resolved your issues, I'm going to merge the PR and tag a new version.

[stefanzweifel]

I've tested the changes made in #205 extensivly in a test project of mine. file_pattern should now work more reliably.

The original issue you described here was primarily solved by adding disable_globbing: true to the Workflow. I've updated the README with an example, when someone might run into this: https://github.com/stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action#custom-file_pattern-changed-files-but-seeing-working-tree-clean-nothing-to-commit-in-the-logs (In a future v5 I would like to permanently fix this issue without resorting to a disable_globbing-option.)

Thanks for helping solving this issue!

[nwithan8]

I recently had this problem. Turns out the file I was trying to auto-commit was in my .gitignore. Perhaps the action could inform users if that's the cause of the file being skipped?