Github worker does not find python script

Question

I wanted to setup a website hosted by Github Pages. To do that, I wanted to run a python script, that generates html-files from jinja (I know this is probably terrible, but it is the best I have)

My app.py is in the root of the project. For the worker, after setting up python and installing the libraries I go:

- name: run python script
  run: python3 app.py

However the build fails with the message:

python3: can't open file '/home/runner/work/sty"rix560.github.io/styrix560.github.io/app.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory

So it is looking exactly where it should, but does not find the file. Where is my file?

Answer 1

To access files at the repository root in your github actions workflow, you need to use the actions/checkout action first.

This action checks-out your repository under $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, so your workflow can access it.

Here is a full example:

name: Python Script Workflow

on:
  push:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository content
        uses: actions/[email protected] # Checkout the repository content to github runner.

      - name: Setup Python Version
        uses: actions/setup-python@v2
        with:
          python-version: 3.8 # Install the python version needed

      - name: Install Python dependencies
        run: python -m pip install --upgrade pip requests # Install the dependencies (if needed)

      - name: Execute Python script # Run the script.py file to get the latest data
        run: python script.py

• Here is a personal workflow implementation as example.
• You can find the workflow runs of this workflow here.