Reusable Workflows with internal reference to Action not supported

[cpboyd]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Question

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Workflow Configuration

Discussion Details

Similar to https://github.blog/changelog/2022-01-25-github-actions-reusable-workflows-can-be-referenced-locally/

I expected that an Action defined in the Reusable Workflow's own Git repo could be referenced via a similar notation, however this fails to load the Action (as it's not checked out to the .github/ path, only files from the calling repo exist there):

jobs:
  deploy:
...

    steps:
...
      - name: Build image
        uses: ./.github/actions/deploy/kaniko

This error is given:

Error: Can't find 'action.yml', 'action.yaml' or 'Dockerfile' under '/home/runner/_work/user-documents/user-documents/.github/actions/deploy/kaniko'. Did you forget to run actions/checkout before running your local action?

[CoderShuvo]

Hey! 👋

You're almost there — the issue is that your reusable workflow runs in the context of the calling repository, not the repo where the reusable workflow itself is defined. So when you reference a local action like ./.github/actions/deploy/kaniko, it looks for that path in the calling repo, not in the reusable workflow’s repo.

If the action lives in the same repo as the reusable workflow, it won’t be available unless the calling repo also has that same path and file. That’s why you’re seeing:

Can't find 'action.yml'...

✅ Workaround:
To use actions from the reusable workflow’s own repo, you need to publish the action separately, or reference it by full uses: org/repo/path@ref syntax (e.g., use a git tag or commit SHA):

- uses: your-org/your-repo/.github/actions/deploy/kaniko@v1

Let me know if you want help structuring that — ran into this same thing before 😅

[cpboyd]

Yes, this is the workaround that I've used, but it still complicates internal references compared to the reusable workflows generally. (as the v1 reference would need to be updated and potentially be out-of-sync with the workflow ref if you update the v1 tag)

e.g. Let's say you make an internal change to how the action and workflow interact between v1.4.2 and v1.5.0 that might not necessitate a new major version, the [email protected] would still reference action@v1 and thus change to v1.5.0

Granted, GitHub would probably need to adjust how the annotations are evaluated and maybe introduce a new notation to distinguish between "this is in the workflow's repository" vs "this is in the caller's repository"

I'm not sure I see much value in expecting the caller repositories to each define their own .github/actions/deploy/kaniko, though. That seems antithetical to the point of reusable workflows generally. (except maybe to allow overrides)