support: self-hosted runner publishes directory with weird prefix

I recently switched a workflow that includes peaceiris/actions-gh-pages to use a self-hosted runner.

When using peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3 and when the output branch doesn’t already exist, the deploy step succeeded but placed the published data under a prefix, i.e. the output was written to undefined/actions_github_pages_1651252139745/test.json instead of just test.json. Here are links for the workflow, the job log, and output branch. Some key lines of output:

INFO:nxontology_data.utils:Wrote ontology to /actions-runner/_work/nxontology-data/nxontology-data/output/test/test.json
...

/usr/bin/git clone --depth=1 --single-branch --branch output/test ***github.com/related-sciences/nxontology-data.git undefined/actions_github_pages_1651252139745
  Cloning into 'undefined/actions_github_pages_1651252139745'...
  warning: Could not find remote branch output/test to clone.
  fatal: Remote branch output/test not found in upstream origin
  [INFO] first deployment, create new branch output/test
  [INFO] The process '/usr/bin/git' failed with exit code 128
  [INFO] chdir undefined/actions_github_pages_16512521397[45](https://github.com/related-sciences/nxontology-data/runs/6232229406?check_suite_focus=true#step:6:45)
  /usr/bin/git init
  Initialized empty Git repository in /actions-runner/_work/nxontology-data/nxontology-data/undefined/actions_github_pages_1651252139745/.git/
  /usr/bin/git checkout --orphan output/test
  Switched to a new branch 'output/test'
  [INFO] prepare publishing assets
  [INFO] create undefined/actions_github_pages_1651252139745
  [INFO] copy /actions-runner/_work/nxontology-data/nxontology-data/output/test to undefined/actions_github_pages_1651252139745
  cp: no such file or directory: /actions-runner/_work/nxontology-data/nxontology-data/output/test/.*

When using peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@main, I got a failure:

Error: File not found: '/actions-runner/_work/_actions/peaceiris/actions-gh-pages/main/lib/index.js'

When using peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3 but when the output branch already exists, I get:

  /usr/bin/git push origin output/test
  To https://github.com/related-sciences/nxontology-data.git
   ! [rejected]        output/test -> output/test (fetch first)
  error: failed to push some refs to '***github.com/related-sciences/nxontology-data.git'
  hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do
  hint: not have locally. This is usually caused by another repository pushing
  hint: to the same ref. You may want to first integrate the remote changes
  hint: (e.g., 'git pull ...') before pushing again.
  hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.
  Error: Action failed with "The process '/usr/bin/git' failed with exit code 1"

So not sure exactly how to proceed.

Relevant links

Public repository: https://github.com/related-sciences/nxontology-data YAML config: https://github.com/related-sciences/nxontology-data/blob/6b43ce4927641f43baebc3e077e0c56a32fdf53f/.github/workflows/create.yaml

[dhimmel]

@peaceiris hoping to catch your eye here, especially since this would be great to get fixed in the next major release. The issue is that content is deployed to a directory like undefined/actions_github_pages_1651252139745 rather than being placed in the root of the branch.

I’m having this issue using a self-hosted runner and @pavlovp experienced this issue when setting force_orphan: true.

[dhimmel]

@peaceiris any insights here? Happy to help diagnose.