Reusable workflow cannot find 'action.yml', 'action.yaml' or 'Dockerfile'

[EmberRandall]

In my repository, we've got a workflow that pushes our code to staging on pushes to main; I want to turn that into a reusable workflow so I can call it from a second workflow that creates a release branch and pushes that branch to staging. However, when I try to call the reusable workflow, I get Error: Can't find 'action.yml', 'action.yaml' or 'Dockerfile' under '/home/runner/work/zendesk-bulk-update-api/zendesk-bulk-update-api/.github/workflows/staging.yml'. Did you forget to run actions/checkout before running your local action?

My caller workflow:

name: Create release branch

on:
  schedule:
    # Every tuesday at 12 am UTC, aka 5 pm pacific time
    - cron: '0 0 * * 2'
  # TODO: remove once working
  push:
    branches: [ember/action]
  # Allows this action to be run manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  create-branch:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Set branch name
        run: echo "NAME=release-$(date +'%Y.%m.%d')" >> $GITHUB_ENV

      - uses: peterjgrainger/[email protected]
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          branch: '${{ env.NAME }}'

      - uses: ./.github/workflows/staging.yml
        with:
          branch_name: ${{ env.NAME }}

I've tried a bunch of different options from various StackOverflow and community posts, including moving the job out of a step and into its own job, but I haven't been able to get the syntax right for any of them, or else it fails with the same error. What's the right way to do this?

[airtower-luna]

This looks like you're trying to call the reusable workflow as a step, which isn't possible.

      - uses: ./.github/workflows/staging.yml
        with:
          branch_name: ${{ env.NAME }}

Reusable workflows must be called as jobs. If you want to reuse your code at the step level, take a look at composite actions.

Which fits better depends on what your code does, in short a reusable workflow is good if you want to reuse a workflow exactly as it is (possibly with parameters), custom actions (composite or not) are good if you want building blocks to use as steps in other workflows.

[owenconti]

Oh my-action is a composite action there I guess? Man, the number hours I've wasted on this stuff 😞

[airtower-luna]

That one is calling a local action (leaving out the necessary checkout). A step cannot call a reusable workflow.

[joeythomaschaske]

This is unfortunate, the entire reason I want to use a reuseable workflow is to avoid multiple jobs because the environment resets between them, even when they are specified with needs

It really shouldn't be necessary to have to checkout the repo + do setup work in each job in a workflow, we should be able to create 1 master "setup" job/workflow that doesn't get erased. There's a lot of wasted CPU time with this approach and makes me wonder if this is by design since github actions bills based on minutes.

[rajuashok]

@joeythomaschaske I'm trying to do this myself - does composite action not solve this problem? About to try it myself so I'll let you know what I find.

[WckD123]

Thank god I stumbled upon this thread. I was about to give up on reusable Github actions. Github actions. Coding. And maybe on life itself.