How to update PATH in GitHub Actions

Question

I'm trying to update the path variable in Linux VM in GitHub CI.

What I'm trying are:

• export PATH="${PATH}:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/cmdline-tools/bin"
• export PATH=$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/cmdline-tools/bin:$PATH

But nothing seems to working, as when I'm trying to echo, it doesn't return me what I was expecting. What it lists is:

/home/runner/.local/bin
/opt/pipx_bin
/home/runner/.cargo/bin
/home/runner/.config/composer/vendor/bin
/usr/local/.ghcup/bin
/home/runner/.dotnet/tools
/snap/bin
/usr/local/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/sbin
/usr/bin
/sbin
/bin
/usr/games
/usr/local/games
/snap/bin

It should have contained (or at least something like this):

/usr/lib/android-sdk/cmdline-tools/cmdline-tools/bin

Full job details: https://github.com/maifeeulasad/unmukto/actions/runs/3590283087/jobs/6043518013

Answer 1

It does get added to the $PATH, but you can't use it in subsequent steps because GitHub Actions isolates steps from one another. If you ran sdkmanager --version in the same step that you update the $PATH in, it would work. Use the GitHub Actions syntax for Adding a system path to append to $GITHUB_PATH, which will automatically persist your edit across the rest of steps in the job:

Prepends a directory to the system PATH variable and automatically makes it available to all subsequent actions in the current job; the currently running action cannot access the updated path variable.

An abbreviated version of your build.yml using $GITHUB_PATH:

name: build Android

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: 'Exporting android sdk'    
      run: echo "ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/usr/lib/android-sdk" >> $GITHUB_ENV
    - name: 'Download and extract android-cli tools'    
      run: |
        curl https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-9123335_latest.zip --output commandlinetools-linux-9123335_latest.zip
        sudo mkdir /usr/lib/android-sdk/cmdline-tools
        sudo unzip -o commandlinetools-linux-9123335_latest.zip -d /usr/lib/android-sdk/cmdline-tools
    - name: 'Exporting android-cli (sdkmanager) ,'    
      run: echo "${{ env.ANDROID_SDK_ROOT }}/cmdline-tools/cmdline-tools/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH

Also note how instead of exporting ANDROID_SDK_ROOT, it's added to the $GITHUB_ENV and accessed in a subsequent step with ${{ env.ANDROID_SDK_ROOT}}.