publishing to npm fails after publishing to GPR

I have a workflow like this that’s supposed to publish to npm once I publish to GPR:

name: Publish to npm
on: registry_package
jobs:
  publish-npm:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: 12
          registry-url: https://registry.npmjs.org/
      - run: npm install && npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.npm_token}}

I have the npm_token secret added to this repository.

When I just published to GPR, it kicked off this workflow job, but it failed at the last step of publishing to npm. The error was from npm saying:

npm ERR! code E401
npm ERR! Unable to authenticate, need: Basic realm="GitHub Package Registry"

What does this error mean, and how do I fix it? I don’t see anything about setting “basic realm” in the recipes for this setup-node action.

[tjanson]

@pqt Just to be clear: You’re talking about publishing to GitHub Package Registry only (not the npmjs.org registry)? Because I’ve got that working from within GitHub Actions, with this .npmrc

registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/
@tjanson:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com/
//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=${NODE_AUTH_TOKEN}

In the workflow config, I don’t use any with: arguments for the Node setup (except node-version: '10.x'), and I set a personal access token (as secret) for the NODE_AUTH_TOKEN env var (I think the GITHUB_TOKEN would also work).

Is that what you’re trying to accomplish or am I totally misunderstanding you?

PS: That .npmrc is in the repo root, not at ~/.npmrc. Simply commited that file.

[nkzawa]

I also had the same issue, and fixed by creating ~/.npmrc like:

- run: echo "//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${{ secrets.NPM_AUTH_TOKEN }}" > ~/.npmrc
- run: npm publish