How To Set Up GitHub Actions to Publish a Lerna Monorepo

Question

I maintain a lerna/yarn monorepo. I'm in the process of migrating the CI/CD from circle to the new GitHuba Actions publish beta. I've created the following workflow:

name: CD

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@master

      - name: Checkout master
        run: git checkout master

      - name: Install rsync
        run: sudo apt install rsync

      - name: Install yarn
        run: |
          curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
          echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
          sudo apt-get update
          sudo apt-get install yarn

      - name: Install Packages
        run: yarn install

      - name: Test
        run: yarn test

      - name: Upload coverage results to Code Climate
        run: sh ./scripts/upload-coverage.sh
        env:
          CC_TEST_REPORTER_ID: ${{ secrets.CC_TEST_REPORTER_ID }}

      - name: Authenticate with Registry
        run: echo "registry=//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=$NPM_TOKEN" > ~/.npmrc
        env:
          NPM_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

      - name: Configure CI Git User
        run: |
          git config --global user.email [email protected]
          git config --global user.name GitHub Actions

      - name: Publish package
        run: yarn deploy --yes
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      - name: Build Docs
        run: yarn docs

      - name: Deploy Docs
        run: |
          echo "apolloelements.dev" > docs/CNAME
          npx gh-pages --dist docs

It fails at the Publish Packages step with this message:

lerna info git Pushing tags...
lerna ERR! Error: Command failed: git push --follow-tags --no-verify origin master
lerna ERR! fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address
lerna ERR! 
lerna ERR!     at makeError (/home/runner/work/apollo-elements/apollo-elements/node_modules/execa/index.js:174:9)
lerna ERR!     at Promise.all.then.arr (/home/runner/work/apollo-elements/apollo-elements/node_modules/execa/index.js:278:16)
lerna ERR! Error: Command failed: git push --follow-tags --no-verify origin master
lerna ERR! fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address
lerna ERR! 
lerna ERR!     at makeError (/home/runner/work/apollo-elements/apollo-elements/node_modules/execa/index.js:174:9)
lerna ERR!     at Promise.all.then.arr (/home/runner/work/apollo-elements/apollo-elements/node_modules/execa/index.js:278:16)
lerna ERR! lerna Command failed: git push --follow-tags --no-verify origin master
lerna ERR! lerna fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address
lerna ERR! lerna 
error Command failed with exit code 128.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.

Changing the remote to use HTTPS and the github token hasn't helped:

git remote rm origin
git remote add origin "https://$USER_NAME:[email protected]/apollo-elements/apollo-elements.git"

Where GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN is a PAT passed via secrets.

In that case, I received this error:

lerna ERR! ENOREMOTEBRANCH Branch 'master' doesn't exist in remote 'origin'.

How should I set up the project to be able to push tags and commits back to the repository from CD?

Answer 1

UPDATED:

This configuration actually works end-to-end. The key features of this config are:

• setting the remote with git remote set-url origin https://$GITHUB_ACTOR:[email protected]/bennypowers/apollo-elements GITHUB_ACTOR is provided by the runner, GITHUB_PAT is a Github Personal Access Token set in the repository's secrets.
• re-checking and pulling with git checkout "${GITHUB_REF:11}" && git pull
• logging out of yarn, since lerna cannot handle yarn for whatever reason.
• using the specific, finicky .npmrc setup shown below, since this is a scoped package.
• running npm whoami after setting up auth. This will throw if authentication is broken lerna publish will push tags for each of your packages, and maybe write to the CHANGELOG.md and package.json files as well, even if it doesn't publish due to bad auth. Running npm whoami here to check that you actually can publish before running lerna prevents the headache of manually restoring the state of the repo.
• passing GITHUB_TOKEN, GH_TOKEN, and NPM_TOKEN to lerna publish

name: CD

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v1

      - name: Configure CI Git User
        run: |
          git config --global user.name '@bennypowers'
          git config --global user.email '[email protected]'
          git remote set-url origin https://$GITHUB_ACTOR:[email protected]/bennypowers/apollo-elements
        env:
          GITHUB_PAT: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_PAT }}

      - name: Checkout and pull branch
        run: git checkout "${GITHUB_REF:11}" && git pull

      - name: Install Packages
        run: yarn install

      - name: Authenticate with Registry
        run: |
          yarn logout
          echo "@apollo-elements:registry=http://registry.npmjs.org/" > .npmrc
          echo "registry=http://registry.npmjs.org/" >> .npmrc
          echo "//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=$NPM_TOKEN" >> .npmrc
          npm whoami
        env:
          NPM_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

      - name: Publish package
        run: lerna publish --yes --message 'chore: release new versions'
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_PAT }}
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_PAT }}
          NPM_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

Note the above config redacts some irrelevant steps. See the complete workflow for the unredacted version

ORIGINAL ANSWER:

With help from StackOverflow user @rmunn, I arrived at this solution:

  - name: Configure CI Git User
    run: |
      git remote rm origin
      git remote add origin "https://$USER_NAME:[email protected]/apollo-elements/apollo-elements.git"
      git fetch
      git config --global user.email [email protected]
      git config --global user.name GitHub Actions
    env:
      USER_NAME: ${{ secrets.DEPLOYING_USER_NAME }}
      GITHUB_PAT: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_PAT }}

Where GITHUB_PAT is a personal access token with repo scope, saved in secrets.

The git fetch is required to set up local branches on the altered remote. The personal access token is required to push back to the repository.