GitHub Actions Debugger

This action that can be used to debug a GitHub action on a hosted runner. This action needs to used be together with the runner-codespace project. This project will start a codespace where this action connects to and allows a shell access to the runner that is running the action. And it also allows you to edit the files on the runner through a codespace.

Inputs

`token`

Required The personal access token that has access to codespaces.

# GitHub token with the following permissions:
# - Full control of codespaces (codespace).

token: ghp_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

`codespace`

Optional The name of the codespace that should be used.

If not specified the action will try to find the codespace that is using the runner-codespace project. The name of the codespace can be found in the URL of the codespace (https://[NAME].github.dev/).

# The name of the codespace can be found in the URL of # the codespace
# (`https://[NAME].github.dev/`). If not specified the action will try
# to find the codespace that is using the runner-codespace project.

codespace: laughing-cod-jxvr564g44cpx9r

Example

Below is an example of how this action can be used in a GitHub workflow.

jobs:
  build:
    # also works on windows-latest and ubuntu-latest
    runs-on: macos-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4

    - run: something-that-fails.sh

    - name: Debug in Codespace
      if: failure()
      uses: dlemstra/github-actions-debugger@v1
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.TOKEN_FOR_CODESPACES }}

Once the action has been triggered and the job has failed, the action will try to find the codespace that is using the runner codespace project. And when it has found the codespace it will connect to it and allow a shell to be opened on the runner that is running the action.

/workspaces/runner-codespace # shell
Warning: Permanently added '[localhost]:4748' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.

The default interactive shell is now zsh.
To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.
For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.
Mac-1717160438331:runner-codespace runner$ uname -a
Darwin Mac-1717160438331.local 23.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 23.5.0: Wed May  1 20:12:39 PDT 2024; root:xnu-10063.121.3~5/RELEASE_ARM64_VMAPPLE arm64
Mac-1717160438331:runner-codespace runner

Demo

A demo of this project can be found here: https://github.com/dlemstra/github-actions-debugger-demo.

github-actions-debugger

Commits

Updated packages.

Correct colors of output.

Make it more clear what kind of permissions the actions requires.

Another update of the readme.

Updated readme.

Mark token as required.

README