Support for custom or shorter base workdir paths

Currently, the base working directory for actions exists within a sub folder of the installation directory and duplicates the repository twice. This can be an issue for repos with longer names along with certain tools (Python VENV, MSBuild).

There is a workflow yaml option to set the base working directory, but this is not very portable and the path can be runner specific.

A few things could help with this issue:

1. Instead of using the pattern <install_dir>/_work/<repo_name>/<repo_name>/ use the path <install_dir>/_work/<guid_or_short_unique_string/
2. Add a setting or environment variable to change the base path of <install_dir>/_work/ to a different path on disk.

[jahales-intel]

Someone from my organization pointed me to a workaround that they’re using and I’m sharing here in case it helps while we wait for a robust fix.

There’s a Pipeline configuration folder in the runner work directory where you can modify the pipeline directory and workspace directory for a given repository:

<work directory>\PipelineMapping<organization><repository>\PipelineFolder.json

I’ve been modifying that file to create a shorter file path and it seems to work (pipelineDirectory / workspaceDirectory). I’m not aware of any documentation for this.

[MichaelJJ]

Great, thanks. This is causing some pain for multiple members of our Enterprise and would be great to have resolved!