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Ubuntu – Combining `uses` with `strategy`

I’m new to GitHub Actions so I don’t quite have the Googlefu to solve my problem

Simplifying, I have something like

jobs:
  test_run_a:
    uses: ./.github/workflows/test.yml
    with:
      param: "A"
    secrets: inherit

in the other file test.yml I have

name: test

on:
  workflow_call:
    inputs:
      param:
          required: true
          type: string

jobs:
  unit-test:
    timeout-minutes: 60
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        os: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest]
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    steps: ...

so currently, all jobs that use test.yml run on ubuntu and mac. I would like to make it so that it is the outer job (in this case test_run_a) that defines the OS matrix.

Basically, I would like to make it so that job test_run_a runs on both OS, and I can define another test_run_b that runs only on mac, with both of them using the shared job code in test.yml

I have tried to move the strategy out into the outer job, but it does not work. Thank you in advance

Tags:

2

Answers


  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER
    0

    Thanks to @licvdom I was able to get it working, with the help of this link: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/11692#discussioncomment-3541856

    You have to do

    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        os: ${{ fromJson(input.systems) }}
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}

    and call it with

    systems: "['ubuntu-latest', 'macos-latest']"

    The double quotes and single quotes are critical, you are basically formatting a JSON as a string, GitHub Actions won't let you pass a list as a param so you have to pass a string and convert it.


  2. 0

    So, probably the simplest solution would be to add another parameterized input (let’s call it systems and annotate it with a description) to the test.yml file:

    name: test
on:
  workflow_call:
    inputs:
      param:
          required: true
          type: string
      systems:
          required: true
          description: "A comma-separated string with the desired os"
          type: string

jobs:
  unit-test:
    timeout-minutes: 60
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        os: [ '${{ inputs.systems }}' ]
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    steps: ...

    and then you can define the desired systems from your consuming workflow:

    jobs:
  test_run_a:
    uses: ./.github/workflows/test.yml
    with:
      param: "A"
      systems: "ubuntu-latest, macos-latest"
    secrets: inherit

    You can check more examples of this pattern on GitHub Docs: Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions

    If you want to take it a step further, you could look into creating a composite action so that you can reuse the workflow across different repositories. Cheers

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