Setting job environment dynamically doesn't work when using key-value format

Describe the bug I was trying to set the job environment dynamically so I can use my GitHub production & staging environment secrets in a single workflow.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

name: Set Job Enviroment Dynamically 
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  set_environment:
    outputs:
      my_env: ${{ steps.setenv.outputs.my_env }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - id: setenv
      run: echo "::set-output name=my_env::production"

  use_outputs_environemnt_directly:    
    needs: set_environment
    environment: ${{ needs.set_environment.outputs.my_env }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Testing job environment
      run: echo "Hello From Production Envrionment." 

See failing workflow: failure.yaml

Expected behavior The environment should be set to production.

What’s not working?

I get the below error: The workflow is not valid. .github/workflows/job-environment-test-ko.yml (Line: 15, Col: 18): Unrecognized named-value: 'needs'. Located at position 1 within expression: needs.set_environment.outputs.en

Workaround found

Using object format for jobs environment fixes the issue

 environment: 
      name: ${{ needs.set_environment.outputs.my_env }}

See successful workflow: success.yaml

[cornwe19]

Will being able to dynamically specify environment name be added at any point? This makes selecting an environment from a workflow_dispatch event a lot more complicated.

[yaananth]

Thanks for the report!

We support expressions only in https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#example-using-environment-name-and-url with mappings.

environment: blah exists for short form notations, and it doesn’t support contexts.