changed-files GitHub Action

A Faster Github Action to filter for changed files for pull requests.

Other changed-files actions rely on native git diffs comparing against the merge-base. While this works releatively well for small-to-medium sized projects. This method doesn't scale well for any moderately or large git codebase. Particularly if this code-base has a large velocity of changes. There becomes a problem with the full clones taking too long, then people often move to shallow clones coupled with incremental enrichment to once again find the merge-base to accurrately compare. Eventually even this solution becomes brittle and difficult to scale.

Thus I've created this action to take advantage of the existing computation GitHub has already done (and visible in the UI) through their API. This action depends on there being a pull request open, but is far faster than git-clone and diff comparison. In addition you get more information about the status of the change (additions/deletions/modified/...). We also have patch content but this is unused.

It would be expected to use this action for other downstream conditional steps that you might use in your github workflows.

Inputs

`github-token`

Required The github token, for the most part you can just use ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}.

Example ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

`separator`

Required The separator to use on output.

Default ,

Example ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

`ignore_file_patterns`

Optional A newline separated list of regex paths to ignore.

Default ``

Example

foo/.*\.json
bar/.*\.ini

`only_file_patterns`

Optional A newline separated list of regex paths to only consider. This is applied before ignore_file_patterns.

Default ``

Example

foo/.*\.json
bar/.*\.ini

`filter_by_status`

Optional A newline separated list of status to filter by, options are: added,removed,modified,renamed,copied,changed,unchanged. This is applied before ignore_file_patterns.

Default `` - meaning all.

Example

added
copied
renamed

Outputs

`all_changed_files`

A list of changed file paths using the separator.

Example foo/a.json,bar/c.ini

`only_added`

A list of only added file paths using the separator.

Example foo/a.json,bar/c.ini

`only_modified`

A list of only modified file paths using the separator.

Example foo/a.json,bar/c.ini

`only_deleted`

A list of only deleted file paths using the separator.

Example foo/a.json,bar/c.ini

`any_changed`

"true" if any files were modified.

Example true

`any_added`

"true" if any files were marked with "added" status.

Example true

`any_modified`

"true" if any files were marked with "modified" status

Example true

`any_deleted`

"true" if any files were marked with "deleted" status

Example true

Example usage

jobs:
  my_check: # make sure the action works on a clean machine without building
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: changed-files
        id: changed-files
        uses: platinummonkey/changed-files@v1
        with:
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          separator: ','
          ignore_files_pattern: |
            foo/.*\.json
          only_files_pattern: |
            foo/bar.*
          filter_by_status: |
            added
            modified
            deleted
      - name: output results
        shell: bash
        env:
          OUTPUT_ANY_CHANGED: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.any_changed }}
          OUTPUT_ALL_CHANGED_FILES: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.all_changed_files }}
          OUTPUT_ANY_ADDED: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.any_added }}
          OUTPUT_ANY_MODIFIED: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.any_modified }}
          OUTPUT_ANY_DELETED: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.any_deleted }}
          OUTPUT_ONLY_ADDED_FILES: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.only_added }}
          OUTPUT_ONLY_MODIFIED_FILES: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.only_modified }}
          OUTPUT_ONLY_DELETED_FILES: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.only_deleted }}
        run: |
          echo "any_changed=${OUTPUT_ANY_CHANGED}"
          echo "all_changed_files=${OUTPUT_ALL_CHANGED_FILES}"
          echo "any_added=${OUTPUT_ANY_ADDED}"
          echo "any_modified=${OUTPUT_ANY_MODIFIED}"
          echo "any_deleted=${OUTPUT_ANY_DELETED}"
          echo "only_added=${OUTPUT_ONLY_ADDED_FILES}"
          echo "only_modified=${OUTPUT_ONLY_MODIFIED_FILES}"
          echo "only_deleted=${OUTPUT_ONLY_DELETED_FILES}"