.npmrc is not created

Expected

When registry-url input is set with env.NODE_AUTH_TOKEN an .npmrc file should be created in project root.

Actual

When registry-url input is set with env.NODE_AUTH_TOKEN an .npmrc file is not created.

Reproduction

.github/workflows/publish.yml

name: Publish
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  publish:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Setup Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '12.x'
          registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org'
          scope: '@foo-software'
      - name: Publish Packages
        run: |
          cat .npmrc

package.json

{
  "name": "root",
  "private": true,
  "keywords": [
    ...
  ],
  "scripts": {
    ...
  },
  "husky": {
    ...
  },
  "lint-staged": {
    ...
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    ...
  }
}

Note: My project is a Lerna based monorepo, so the above package.json has minimal fields. Perhaps, this functionality requires certain fields / values, but I’m not sure why and what those fields would be.

GitHub Action output and linked here.

[adamhenson]

For anyone who’s come across this, my workaround is below, but it feels like a hack since this functionality supposedly exists in actions/setup-node.

      - name: Publish Packages
        run: |
+         echo '//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN  }}' > ${{ github.workspace }}/.npmrc
          cat .npmrc

[adamhenson]

Please stop adding comments that are not helpful in resolving this issue. For now I’m just using my workaround. I’m thinking about closing this since it hasn’t gotten attention from actual contributors. I’m simply reporting a feature of this project that is broken.

My use case isn’t very relevant, but since people have been inquiring and for context: it is simple and standard - I have a repo that includes the code for packages to be published to NPM. I’m using actions/setup_node to setup the Node.js environment which includes NPM and authorizing NPM.

The README for this project states that it can be used for configuring authentication for GPR or npm.

In the usage section of the README it provides an example that you might use to setup and environment to publish packages for NPM. See Publish to npmjs and GPR with npm example.

This is the example from the README.

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
- uses: actions/setup-node@v2
  with:
    node-version: '10.x'
    registry-url: <registry url>
- run: yarn install
- run: yarn publish
  env:
    NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.YARN_TOKEN }}
- uses: actions/setup-node@v2
  with:
    registry-url: 'https://npm.pkg.github.com'
- run: yarn publish
  env:
    NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

And this setup isn’t actually working.