azure/login@v1 and azure/CLI@v1 should be consistent

Please align azure/login@v1 and azure/CLI@v1. It’s really strange and not user friendly.

Given workflow where I first use azure/CLI@v1 to show current az version and then use azure/login@v1 it behaves quite weird.

az version actually shows latest version because this action actually pulls and runs microsoft docker image with azure cli, but then the azure/login@v1 action fails because this one relies on az command being installed on self-hosted github runner.

    - name: show az version
      uses: azure/CLI@v1
      with:
        inlineScript: |
          az version

    - uses: azure/login@v1
      with:
        creds: ${{ secrets.SECRET }}

In my case the azure/login@v1 will fail on az command not being available because my runners are quite clean and az is not installed.

What is the reason to forcing users to both manage az on the hosts and also require having docker installed and pull docker images for actually performing any az actions?

I believe azure/login and azure/cli should use consistent approach in this case.

[jludvice]

Example of az login failure when az is not installed on linux github self-hosted runner.

Run azure/login@v1
  with:
    creds: ***
    enable-AzPSSession: false
    environment: azurecloud
    allow-no-subscriptions: false
  env:
    NOT_RELEVANT: "..."

Error: Az CLI Login failed. Please check the credentials. For more information refer https://aka.ms/create-secrets-for-GitHub-workflows
Error: Error: Unable to locate executable file: az. Please verify either the file path exists or the file can be found within a directory specified by the PATH environment variable. Also check the file mode to verify the file is executable.

[davetapley]

I just lost an hour because of the Please check the credentials. message, when in reality it was just that the act runner I was using didn’t have az installed 😞

Even if we can’t get self installing, can we at least check for az and abort with a clearer error message? I think it’s as simple as checking catching here: https://github.com/Azure/login/blob/db989b30605ff229e9f1de292a8f0aa043ee48b1/src/main.ts#L44

Because which says:

If you check and the tool does not exist, it will throw.

Which currently gets caught by this catch all whose error message doesn’t actually check the error 🤢 : https://github.com/Azure/login/blob/db989b30605ff229e9f1de292a8f0aa043ee48b1/src/main.ts#L209-L211