Command not working as expected

[blaketeres]

I am trying to install and use the ag command for my action. I am able to successfully install it using sudo apt-get. However, it seems to behave erratically. I have tried many combinations of invoking the command, but to no luck. It always errors out with

##[error]Process completed with exit code 1.

At the bottom of this post is a minimal working example yaml block. The command does not error out when running

ag --help

 in the action but does not work with any other combination of arguments. I do not experience any errors locally on my machine, so I do not think it is misuse of the command.

Am I doing something wrong? I’ve spent a day and a half on this now, and no luck. I have no idea why this isn’t working, as the built in linux commands work fine. Apologies if the answer is simple.

Thanks in advance.

name: test
on:

push:

branches:

- master
jobs:

test-job:

runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:

- name: Install and Run Silver Searcher
  run: |
    sudo apt-get install silversearcher-ag
    ag --no-color --group "some_search_string"

[weide-zhou]

Thank you for reaching this out!

I can reproduce the same with ‘ag’ command. I have raised an internal ticket to github. I will update once there’s an update. 

[weide-zhou]

Hi @blaketeres ,

It appears that ag will return 0 if it can find the string and 1 if it can’t.

errorcode.png736×275 36.1 KB

A nonzero exit code will cause the step to fail. You can set ‘continue-on-error: true’ in the step if this behavior isn’t desired: https://help.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#jobsjob_idstepscontinue-on-error

Thanks.

[blaketeres]

Yes, that makes sense. However, ag is returning 1 when my search string actually exists. I apologize for not being more clear and providing a better example. See the example below.

name: test
on:

push:

branches:

- master
jobs:

test-job:

runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Install Silver Searcher
  run: |
    sudo apt-get install silversearcher-ag

- name: Make test search file
  run: echo "hello world" > test_search.txt

- name: Run Silver Searcher on howto's
  run: |
    ag "hello" # this should not fail ("hello" found inside of "test_search.txt:)

This ag command should not return 1, but should return 0. I am experiencing a failing ag command with a return value of 1 in this case. Am I managing the paths in the container incorrectly?

[weide-zhou]

Hi @blaketeres ,

You can add ‘exit 0’ at the end of the ag command, it works on my side. Code sample as below:

steps:
      - name: Install Silver Searcher
        run: |
          sudo apt-get install silversearcher-ag
      - name: Make test search file
        run: echo "hello world" > test_search.txt
  - name: Run Silver Searcher on howto's
    run: |
      ag "hello" & exit 0

Thanks.