$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY isn't documented

[jsoref]

nektos/act#1607 added some support for $GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY

There is no documentation https://nektosact.com/?search=github_step_summary

Note that you can no longer use --env GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY=/dev/stdout -- that's fine, although it'd be nice if there was a warning (this is out of scope).

The best I've found to access step summaries is:

act -r
while true; do
  act_docker_pid=$(docker ps|perl -ne 'next unless s{\s.*"tail -f /dev/null".*act-.*}{};print'|tail -1)
  if [ -z "$act_docker_pid" ]; then
    break
  fi
  echo "$(docker ps|grep ^$act_docker_pid)::"
  docker exec $act_docker_pid cat /var/run/act/workflow/SUMMARY.md
  echo
  docker rm -f $act_docker_pid > /dev/null
done

act -r means that the container is kept around
GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY is generally defined as /var/run/act/workflow/SUMMARY.md

Note that each job is run in its own docker container so the files are independent.

(This isn't remotely ideal, but some documentation is better than nothing.)

---

It also should note that content written to $GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY will be destroyed at the beginning of the next step, so anyone running a multistep workflow in ACT should not rely on it as the output from any step other than the last will not be accessible.

nektos/act#2273

[stephanschielke]

Thanks for your research on this. This workaround helped me.

It looks like the path to SUMMARY.md is hardcoded here.

So are all the other files:

docker exec <running_act_container_id> ls -al /var/run/act/workflow
...
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root    0 Jan  1  1970 SUMMARY.md
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root    0 Jan  1  1970 envs.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    2 Jan  1  1970 event.json
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root    0 Jan  1  1970 outputcmd.txt
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root    0 Jan  1  1970 pathcmd.txt
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root    0 Jan  1  1970 statecmd.txt

Also, there seems to be some very funky stuff going on with the GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY env vars here
coming from here
but actually stemming from another repo and codebase here

The only real solution IMHO is a dedicated feature as outlined (by you) here