The latest release of r-lib/actions "broke" use_github_action()

[maelle]

Reported by @SunnyTseng 🙏

Error we observe, with the backtrace hinting at pick_tag() being the problem:

> usethis::use_github_action()
Which action do you want to add? (0 to exit)
(See <https://github.com/r-lib/actions/tree/v2/examples> for other options) 

1: check-standard: Run `R CMD check` on Linux, macOS, and Windows
2: test-coverage: Compute test coverage and report to https://about.codecov.io
3: pr-commands: Add /document and /style commands for pull requests

Selection: 1
Error: invalid version specification ‘’
Backtrace:
 1. usethis::use_github_action()
 3. usethis:::latest_release()
 4. usethis:::pick_tag(tag_names)
 5. base::numeric_version(sub("^[^0-9]*", "", dat$nm))
 6. base::.make_numeric_version(x, strict, .standard_regexps()$valid_numeric_version)

use_github_action() finds the ref part of the URL to the workflow by picking the latest release of the r-lib/actions repository.

usethis/R/github-actions.R

Line 90 in 9e64daf

ref <- ref %||% latest_release()

In latest_release(), the release names are extracted via GitHub API:

usethis/R/github-actions.R

Lines 260 to 270 in 9e64daf

	raw_releases <- gh::gh(
	"/repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases",
	owner = spec_owner(parsed$repo_spec),
	repo = spec_repo(parsed$repo_spec),
	.api_url = parsed$host,
	.limit = Inf
	)
	tag_names <- purrr::discard(
	map_chr(raw_releases, "tag_name"),
	map_lgl(raw_releases, "prerelease")
	)

Today these names are c("v2", "sysreqs", "v1"). (Yesterday there was a new release of the r-lib/actions repo called "sysreqs". https://github.com/r-lib/actions/releases)

In pick_tag(), the line below transforms each of the names to a numeric version

usethis/R/github-actions.R

Line 278 in 9e64daf

dat$version <- numeric_version(sub("^[^0-9]*", "", dat$nm))

With "sysreqs", it doesn't work:

numeric_version(sub("^[^0-9]*", "", "sysreqs"))
#> Error: invalid version specification ''

^{Created on 2024-03-26 with reprex v2.1.0}

[maelle]

@gaborcsardi would it work to simply add a "0" at the end of the "sysreqs" release name? 😅

numeric_version(sub("^[^0-9]*", "", "sysreqs0"))
#> [1] '0'

^{Created on 2024-03-26 with reprex v2.1.0}

[maelle]

In the meantime, a workaround is to manually add the ref to the usethis_github_action() call:

use_github_action(ref = "v2")

[gaborcsardi]

I'll delete the sysreqs tag in ~30 minutes, to give a chance to the currently running workflows to finish the setup-r step. After that this should be fixed.

[maelle]

Thank you!!

[gaborcsardi]

OK, deleted the tag, windows setup-r still works, all seem to be good. Thanks for the report and the investigation. It made the fix really easy on my part.