How can I reuse a GitHub Actions workflow from the branch I'm currently working on?

Question

I'd like to abstract some of my GitHub Actions with a reusable workflow.

In order to do this, I need to call my newly defined callable workflow in the format {owner}/{repo}/{path}/{filename}@{ref}

e.g. (from the docs)

jobs:
  call-workflow-1:
    uses: octo-org/this-repo/.github/workflows/workflow-1.yml@172239021f7ba04fe7327647b213799853a9eb89
  call-workflow-2:
    uses: octo-org/another-repo/.github/workflows/workflow-2.yml@v1

However, in practice, I'm working on my branch, some-branch-name, where I'm working on my workflow-1.yml file and I'd like to be able to run my actions as defined in my current branch, Given

`{ref} can be a SHA, a release tag, or a branch name.

It seems like I'd need to use

jobs:
  call-workflow-1:
    uses: octo-org/this-repo/.github/workflows/workflow-1.yml@some-branch-name

But, I'd like this to work for any branch, so

jobs:
  call-workflow-1:
    uses: octo-org/this-repo/.github/workflows/workflow-1.yml@${{ github.ref }}

But, it turns out this isn't possible as expressions can't be used in the uses attributes.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

It's as you said: It can't be done at the moment as Github Actions doesn't support expressions with uses attributes.

There is no workaround (yet?) because the workflow interpreter (that also checks the workflow syntax when you push the workflow to the repository) can't get the value from the expression at that moment.

It could maybe work if the workflow was recognized by the interpreter, but it doesn't event appear on the Actions tab as it's considered invalid.

For the moment, you can only use tag, branch ref or commit hash after the @ symbol, the same way you use any action.

Note that someone else had the same issue here