GitHub Community
Better log separation for composite actions #21276
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See actions/runner#1311. Describe the enhancement The best would be to have the "sub-steps" clearly displayed in the interface liked the steps are for a "normal" actions. We could settle for a text based split but it would not be ideal. I feel this will be essential for Additional information |
Replies: 93 comments 61 replies
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This is really important. Currently logs of composite actions looks like mess. Why no update on this yet? |
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This is my biggest annoyance with composite actions atm. I am more than happy for them not to even be subspaced, but each step could be right at the top level just like regular steps. After all it is a "composite" of steps. |
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Bumping this as well, agree with the rest of the folks |
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We would also greatly benefit from this |
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This could make things a lot nicer. Upvoting!! |
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We would love to have this |
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Bumping, this would be so helpful |
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+1 |
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+1 |
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+1 |
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+1 |
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+1 |
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This is a must-have. Right now, I'm forced to do some awkward stuff with multiple jobs (despite the fact it could all be in one job) in order to try to make the "build" steps visually distinct from the "test" steps. Otherwise, if the build fails, it looks like the test job failed unless you look super closely. |
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+1 |
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I moved one of my job steps to composite action, to solve another github actions limitation (to be able to skip jobs and still run dependent ones without needing to spam jobs with |
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+1 |
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+1 |
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It's fascinating to me that such an obvious oversight hasn't been fixed yet after this many years open. I stumbled upon this today after refactoring some of our workflows by extracting a set of common build steps into a composite action. I quickly realized how messy the logs were and decided to add a bunch of custom log groups around some of the commands in the action, which itself leads to quite a bit of duplication of intent. Things like: - name: Restore packages
shell: bash
run: |
echo "::group::Restoring packages..."
dotnet restore --locked-mode
echo "::endgroup::"Whereas it could've just been: - name: Restore packages
shell: bash
run: dotnet restore --locked-modeAnd to make things even worse, when the actual sub-step is logged, it shows the This is such a shitty experience overall. |
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You can use simple NOOP in bash to better visualize it i.e. will be visible in logs as: It blends better with steps that are simple: which will be visible as |
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+1 |
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Hi everyone 👋 Thank you for all the feedback here. The current experience where composite action logs are "all aggregated as if it was one big action" makes debugging difficult, and manually wrapping every command in We're working on an improvement and would love your feedback. What we're thinkingNested steps within a composite action would render as collapsible regions within the log panel. The sidebar would stay the same (your composite action still appears as a single step there), but when you click into the logs, you'd see each nested step as its own collapsible section. Each collapse bar would show:
Here's what it looks like: 
Note:
Nesting supportIf your composite action calls another composite action, the collapse bars would nest accordingly. Collapsing a parent hides all its children, keeping things tidy. 
Collapsed by defaultCompleted nested steps would render collapsed by default, keeping the log panel compact while still surfacing step boundaries. You'd expand only what you need to investigate. What stays the same
Why log panel first?We know some of you want nested steps to appear in the sidebar as separate entries. We're open to enabling that as an opt-in feature in the future. We just want to avoid suddenly converting every existing composite action to show nested steps in the sidebar. That would break assumptions around single-step logging, which could break users' automation. Even with that future option, the single-step experience still needs to be better than it currently is. You should be able to click into a composite action and see what's happening inside. Collapsible regions in the log panel address that without breaking existing behavior or automation. Does this address your needs?We think this hits the core pain points:
But we want to make sure we're not missing anything. A few questions:
We'd love to hear if this would work for your use cases. Thanks in advance! — The GitHub Actions Team |
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Do you mean not rolled out at all or are some users trialing the feature? |
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@ofek it is fully turned off currently |
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Hi @ericsciple any updates on this feature? |
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Yes I've been hoping for this for ages, would be a great improvement to the UI |
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I don't think the proposed design provides a good user experience. We already have headers that define the step boundaries, and the UI should build on that structure. We can either display the composite action's steps alongside the existing steps (the composite action is then abstracted away), or introduce an additional nested level with the same component to represent the composite action explicitly. Exposing this through the logs feels like a workaround rather than a solution. Also, line numbering should remain local to each step rather than being global across the composite action. |
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ok, it works for at least one i just triggered:
But, even right now, not all runners are 2.333.0: https://github.com/check-spelling-sandbox/check-spelling/actions/runs/23624181272/job/68809674917#step:1:1 is |
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The <svg viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16" height="16" aria-hidden="true" style="vertical-align: text-bottom; margin-right: 8px;">
<g transform="translate(1.2,1.2) scale(0.8)">
<path fill="#000000" d="M6.457 1.047c.659-1.234 2.427-1.234 3.086 0l6.09 11.418c.63 1.18-.227 2.535-1.543 2.535H1.91c-1.316 0-2.174-1.355-1.543-2.535L6.457 1.047z" transform="scale(1.15) translate(-1, -0.8)"></path>
<path fill="yellow" d="M6.457 1.047c.659-1.234 2.427-1.234 3.086 0l6.09 11.418c.63 1.18-.227 2.535-1.543 2.535H1.91c-1.316 0-2.174-1.355-1.543-2.535L6.457 1.047z"></path>
<path fill="#000000" d="M8 4.5a1 1 0 0 1 1 1v2.5a1 1 0 0 1-2 0V5.5a1 1 0 0 1 1-1zm1.25 7a1.25 1.25 0 1 1-2.5 0 1.25 1.25 0 0 1 2.5 0z"></path>
</g>
</svg>
Note how much heavier the bottom black outline is than the left+right. |
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The check mark has a weird property where the right arm narrows as it runs away from the bottom corner (as seen in Affinity Studio: Comparing left short arm, corner, right long arm
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While you're working on collapsing things, can you please let us collapse 
env:```yaml env: workflow_check_commit_messages: commits THIS_ACTION_PATH: /home/runner/work/check-spelling/check-spelling spellchecker: /home/runner/work/check-spelling/check-spelling THIS_GITHUB_JOB_ID: spelling INPUTS: { "suppress_push_for_open_pull_request": "1", "check_file_names": "1", "config": "introspected/.github/actions/spelling", "experimental_path": "introspected", "spell_check_this": "check-spelling/spell-check-this@prerelease", "checkout": "false", "post_comment": "0", "use_magic_file": "1", "report-timing": "1", "experimental_apply_changes_via_bot": "1", "use_sarif": "1", "extra_dictionary_limit": "10", "extra_dictionaries": "cspell:software-terms/softwareTerms.txt\ncspell:php/php.txt\ncspell:node/node.txt\ncspell:python/python/python-lib.txt\ncspell:shell/shell-all-words.txt\n", "check_commit_messages": "commits", "ignore-pattern": "[^\\p{Ll}\\p{Lm}\\p{Lt}\\p{Lu}]", "upper-pattern": "[\\p{Lu}\\p{Lt}\\p{Lm}]", "lower-pattern": "[\\p{Ll}\\p{Lm}]", "not-lower-pattern": "[^\\p{Ll}\\p{Lm}]", "not-upper-or-lower-pattern": "[^\\p{Lu}\\p{Lt}\\p{Lm}]", "punctuation-pattern": "'", "GITHUB_TOKEN": "***", "bucket": "", "project": "", "dictionary_url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/check-spelling/check-spelling/dictionary-$DICTIONARY_VERSION/dict.txt", "dictionary_version": "20200211", "debug": "", "experimental_parallel_jobs": "", "capture_output_unknown_words": "", "capture_output_stale_words": "", "capture_output_skipped_files": "", "allow-hunspell": "1", "dictionary_source_prefixes": "{\"cspell\": \"[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/check-spelling/cspell-dicts/v20241114/dictionaries/\](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/check-spelling/cspell-dicts/v20241114/dictionaries//)"}", "check_extra_dictionaries": "cspell:ada/ada.txt\ncspell:aws/aws.txt\ncspell:clojure/clojure.txt\ncspell:companies/companies.txt\ncspell:cpp/compiler-clang-attributes.txt\ncspell:cpp/compiler-gcc.txt\ncspell:cpp/compiler-msvc.txt\ncspell:cpp/ecosystem.txt\ncspell:cpp/lang-jargon.txt\ncspell:cpp/lang-keywords.txt\ncspell:cpp/people.txt\ncspell:cpp/stdlib-c.txt\ncspell:cpp/stdlib-cerrno.txt\ncspell:cpp/stdlib-cmath.txt\ncspell:cpp/stdlib-cpp.txt\ncspell:cpp/template-strings.txt\ncspell:cryptocurrencies/cryptocurrencies.txt\ncspell:csharp/csharp.txt\ncspell:css/css.txt\ncspell:dart/dart.txt\ncspell:django/django.txt\ncspell:django/requirements.txt\ncspell:docker/docker-words.txt\ncspell:dotnet/dotnet.txt\ncspell:elixir/elixir.txt\ncspell:filetypes/filetypes.txt\ncspell:fonts/fonts.txt\ncspell:fullstack/fullstack.txt\ncspell:gaming-terms/gaming-terms.txt\ncspell:golang/go.txt\ncspell:haskell/haskell.txt\ncspell:html/html.txt\ncspell:java/java-terms.txt\ncspell:java/java.txt\ncspell:k8s/k8s.txt\ncspell:latex/latex.txt\ncspell:latex/samples/sample-words.txt\ncspell:lisp/lisp.txt\ncspell:lorem-ipsum/dictionary.txt\ncspell:lua/lua.txt\ncspell:mnemonics/mnemonics.txt\ncspell:monkeyc/monkeyc_keywords.txt\ncspell:node/node.txt\ncspell:npm/npm.txt\ncspell:php/php.txt\ncspell:powershell/powershell.txt\ncspell:public-licenses/generated/public-licenses.txt\ncspell:python/additional_words.txt\ncspell:python/common/extra.txt\ncspell:python/python/python-lib.txt\ncspell:python/python/python.txt\ncspell:r/r.txt\ncspell:redis/redis.txt\ncspell:ruby/ruby.txt\ncspell:rust/rust.txt\ncspell:scala/scala.txt\ncspell:shell/shell-all-words.txt\ncspell:software-terms/software-terms.txt\ncspell:software-terms/webServices.txt\ncspell:sql/sql.txt\ncspell:sql/tsql.txt\ncspell:svelte/svelte.txt\ncspell:swift/swift.txt\ncspell:typescript/typescript.txt\n", "event_aliases": "", "shortest_word": "3", "longest_word": "", "experimental_commit_note": "", "report_title_suffix": "", "only_check_changed_files": "", "internal_state_directory": "", "anonymize_secpoll_source": "", "ignore_security_advisory": "", "largest_file": "1048576", "unknown_word_limit": "5", "unknown_file_word_limit": "10", "errors": "", "warnings": "bad-regex,binary-file,deprecated-feature,ignored-expect-variant,large-file,limited-references,no-newline-at-eof,noisy-file,non-alpha-in-dictionary,single-line-file,token-is-substring,unexpected-line-ending,minified-file,unsupported-configuration,unclosed-block-ignore-begin,unclosed-block-ignore-end", "notices": "candidate-pattern,unused-config-file", "ignored": "", "quit_without_error": "", "ssh_key": "", "task": "", "disable_checks": "", "alternate_engine": "", "alternate_engine_key": "", "caller_container": "", "candidate_example_limit": "3", "summary_table": "1", "check-homoglyphs": "1", "unrecognized-words-before-collapsing": "10", "sarif-token": "", "checkout-token": "", "wait-for-sarif-processing": "false", "include-advice": "metadata", "always-report-comment": "false", "word-splitter-timeout": "30", "check-images": "false", "submodules": "", "ignore-next-line": "", "load-config-from": "{\n \"pr-base-keys\": [\n \"\"\n ],\n \"pr-trusted-keys\": [\n \"\"\n ],\n \"\": []\n}\n" } DEBUG: GH_ACTION_REPOSITORY: check-spelling-sandbox/check-spelling GH_ACTION_REF: prerelease JOB_CHECK_RUN_ID: 68893465830 ```That But really, mostly, it'd be great if it was collapsed by default -- 99% of people don't care. |
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Obviously, |
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Is this still happening? When will it be rolled out? |
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+1 Any update? |
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@ericsciple - can we get an update on this please? It's been quite a while.. |
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I just tested a composite action that I authored, and this showed up in the UI! 
Collapsible menus are shown for each step, with step name, duration and status, just as @ericsciple mentioned in: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/21276#discussioncomment-15552642 Here's a link to the workflow run if you wanted to check it out yourself: https://github.com/mermaid-maker/next-sample-app/actions/runs/29970206513/job/89093797476 |
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Thanks for testing this and sharing the screenshots! We’re glad to see the individual composite-action steps showing up in the UI. We also acknowledge the clipping issue you highlighted. We’ll work on fixing the layout so the step content is displayed correctly without being cut off. Thanks again for the detailed feedback, it’s very helpful 🙇🏼 |
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Hi everyone, We’ve made additional performance improvements to the rendering of log lines, particularly for composite actions with large logs. These improvements were rolled out yesterday. Please let us know if you’re still experiencing slow loading, rendering delays, or any other performance issues when viewing composite action logs. Your feedback will help us validate the improvements and identify any remaining problems. |
Some composite actions work correctly, but I think there's a bug in the implementation. GitHub logs are now showing multiple unexpected entries such as 
compared to this, which is working: |
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I just noticed someone added an organization secret containing a |
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Historically it was easy to add a multline json secret which resulted in |
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This seems to break my use case for terraform deploys. I have a manual intervention step where I like do have users review the plan and approve/deny. Not being able to see logs of previous steps until the entire job completes is a huge gap for me. |
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Follow up: What's interesting is that on my smaller projects with less resources in the state files, I see the logs just find. So this seems like an issue that affects large log blobs. |
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Chrome on a Pixel: 
There's a 🔻 that's running into |
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This spinner bleeds above other things: |
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Fwiw, here's what I see for a hover, it's pretty awkward: |
and others
Hi everyone 👋
Thank you for all the feedback here. The current experience where composite action logs are "all aggregated as if it was one big action" makes debugging difficult, and manually wrapping every command in
::group::markers shouldn't be necessary.We're working on an improvement and would love your feedback.
What we're thinking
Nested steps within a composite action would render as collapsible regions within the log panel. The sidebar would stay the same (your composite action still appears as a single step there), but when you click into the logs, you'd see each nested step as its own collapsible section.
Each collapse bar would show: