• Disallow the usage of popular actions that run on node16 runner. The node16 runner will reach the end of life on November 12.
  • In case of the error, please update your actions to the latest version so that they run on the latest node20 runner.
  • If you're using self-hosted runner and you cannot upgrade your runner to node20 soon, please consider to ignore the error by the paths configuration described below.
• Provide the configuration for ignoring errors by regular expressions in actionlint.yml (or actionlint.yaml). Please see the document for more details. (#217, #342)
  • The paths is a mapping from the file path glob pattern to the corresponding configuration. The ignore configuration is a list of regular expressions to match error messages (similar to the -ignore command line option).

    paths:
      # This pattern matches any YAML file under the '.github/workflows/' directory.
      .github/workflows/**/*.yaml:
        ignore:
          # Ignore the specific error from shellcheck
          - 'shellcheck reported issue in this script: SC2086:.+'
      # This pattern only matches '.github/workflows/release.yaml' file.
      .github/workflows/self-hosted.yaml:
        ignore:
          # Ignore errors from the old runner check. This may be useful for (outdated) self-hosted runner environment.
          - 'the runner of ".+" action is too old to run on GitHub Actions'

  • This configuration was not implemented initially because I wanted to keep the configuration as minimal as possible. However, due to several requests for it, the configuration has now been added.
• Untrusted inputs check is safely skipped inside specific function calls. (#459, thanks @IlyaGulya)
  • For example, the following step contains the untrusted input github.head_ref, but it is safe because it's passed to the contains() argument.

    - run: echo "is_release_branch=${{ contains(github.head_ref, 'release') }}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"

  • For more details, please read the rule document.
• Recognize gcr.io and gcr.dev as the correct container registry hosts. (#463, thanks @takaidohigasi)
  • Note that it is recommended explicitly specifying the scheme like docker://gcr.io/....
• Remove macos-x.0 runner labels which are no longer available. (#452)
• Disable shellcheck SC2043 rule because it can cause false positives on checking run:. (#355)
  • The rule document was updated as well. (#466, thanks @risu729)
• Fix the error message was not deterministic when detecting cycles in needs dependencies.
• Fix the check for format() function was not applied when the function name contains upper case like Format(). Note that function names in ${{ }} placeholders are case-insensitive.
• Update the popular actions data set to the latest.
  • This includes the new ref and commit outputs of actions/checkout.
• Add actions/cache/save and actions/cache/restore to the popular actions data set.
• Links in the README.md now point to the document of the latest version tag instead of HEAD of main branch.
• Add Linter.LintStdin method dedicated to linting STDIN instead of handling STDIN in Command.
• (Dev) Add new check-checks script to maintain the 'Checks' document. It automatically updates the outputs and playground links for example inputs in the document. It also checks the document is up-to-date on CI. Please read the document for more details.

Documentation

• Remove macos-11 runner labels because macOS 11 runner was dropped on 6/28/2024. (#451, thanks @muzimuzhi)
• Support macos-15, macos-15-large, and macos-15-xlarge runner labels. The macOS 15 runner is not globally available yet, but they are available in beta. (#453, thanks @muzimuzhi)
• Release artifact includes checksums for the released binaries. The file name is actionlint_{version}_checksums.txt. (#449)
  • For example, the checksums for v1.7.3 can be found here.
• Fix download-path output is missing in actions/download-artifact@v3 action. (#442)
  • Note that the latest version actions/download-artifact@v4 was not affected by this issue.
• Support Go 1.23.

Documentation

• Fix child processes to run in parallel.
• Update the popular actions data set to the latest. (#442, #445, #446, #447, thanks @maikelvdh)
• Add support for checking branch filters on merge_group event. (#448, thanks @muzimuzhi)
• The playground now supports both light and dark modes and automatically applies the system's theme.
• Fix releasing a failure on making a new winget package. (#438, thanks @vedantmgoyal9)

• Support ubuntu-24.04 runner label, which was recently introduced as beta. (#425, thanks @bitcoin-tools)
• Remove the support for macos-10 runner label which was officially dropped about 2 years ago.
• Remove the support for windows-2016 runner label which was officially dropped about 2 years ago.
• Document URLs used in help output and links in the playground prefer specific version tag rather than main branch. For example,
  • Before: https://github.com/rhysd/actionlint/tree/main/docs
  • After: https://github.com/rhysd/actionlint/tree/v1.7.1/docs
• Fix actionlint wrongly reports an error when using ghcr.io or docker.io at image field of action metadata file of Docker action without docker:// scheme. (#428)

  runs:
    using: 'docker'
    # This should be OK
    image: 'ghcr.io/user/repo:latest'

• Fix checking preactjs/compressed-size-action@v2 usage caused a false positive. (#422)
• Fix an error message when invalid escaping is found in globs.
• The design of the playground page is overhauled following the upgrade of bulma package to v1.
  • Current actionlint version is shown in the heading.
  • The color theme is changed to the official dark theme.
  • The list of useful links is added to the bottom of the page as 'Resources' section.

• From this version, actionlint starts to check action metadata file action.yml (or action.yaml). At this point, only very basic checks are implemented and contents of steps: are not checked yet.
  • It checks properties under runs: section (e.g. main: can be specified when it is a JavaScript action), branding: properties, and so on.

    name: 'My action'
    author: '...'
    # ERROR: 'description' section is missing
    
    branding:
      # ERROR: Invalid icon name
      icon: dog
    
    runs:
      # ERROR: Node.js runtime version is too old
      using: 'node12'
      # ERROR: The source file being run by this action does not exist
      main: 'this-file-does-not-exist.js'
      # ERROR: 'env' configuration is only allowed for Docker actions
      env:
        SOME_VAR: SOME_VALUE

  • actionlint still focuses on checking workflow files. So there is no way to directly specify action.yml as an argument of actionlint command. actionlint checks all local actions which are used by given workflows. If you want to use actionlint for your action development, prepare a test/example workflow which uses your action, and check it with actionlint instead.
  • Checks for steps: contents are planned to be implemented. Since several differences are expected between steps: in workflow file and steps: in action metadata file (e.g. available contexts), the implementation is delayed to later version. And the current implementation of action metadata parser is ad hoc. I'm planning a large refactorying and breaking changes Go API around it are expected.
• Add runner.environment property. (#412)

  - run: echo 'Run by GitHub-hosted runner'
    if: runner.environment == 'github-hosted'

• Using outdated popular actions is now detected at error. See the document for more details.
  • Here 'outdated' means actions which use runtimes no longer supported by GitHub-hosted runners such as node12.

    # ERROR: actions/checkout@v2 is using the outdated runner 'node12'
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2

• Support attestations permission which was recently added to GitHub Actions as beta. (#418, thanks @bdehamer)

  permissions:
    id-token: write
    contents: read
    attestations: write

• Check comparison expressions more strictly. Arbitrary types of operands can be compared as the official document explains. However, comparisons between some types are actually meaningless because the values are converted to numbers implicitly. actionlint catches such meaningless comparisons as errors. Please see the check document for more details.

  on:
    workflow_call:
      inputs:
        timeout:
          type: boolean
  
  jobs:
    test:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      steps:
        - run: echo 'called!'
          # ERROR: Comparing string to object is always evaluated to false
          if: ${{ github.event == 'workflow_call' }}
        - run: echo 'timeout is too long'
          # ERROR: Comparing boolean value with `>` doesn't make sense
          if: ${{ inputs.timeout > 60 }}

• Follow the update that macos-latest is now an alias to macos-14 runner.
• Support a custom python shell by pyflakes rule.
• Add workaround actionlint reports that dorny/paths-filter's predicate-quantifier input is not defined. (#416)
• Fix the type of a conditional expression by comparison operators is wider than expected by implementing type narrowing. (#384)
  • For example, the type of following expression should be number but it was actually string | number and actionlint complained that timeout-minutes must take a number value.

    timeout-minutes: ${{ env.FOO && 10 || 60 }}

• Fix ${{ }} placeholder is not available at jobs.<job_id>.services. (#402)

  jobs:
    test:
      services: ${{ fromJSON('...') }}
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      steps:
        - run: ...

• Do not check outputs of google-github-actions/get-secretmanager-secrets because this action sets outputs dynamically. (#404)
• Fix defaults.run is ignored on detecting the shell used in run:. (#409)

  defaults:
    run:
      shell: pwsh
  jobs:
    test:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      steps:
        # This was wrongly detected as bash script
        - run: $Env:FOO = "FOO"

• Fix parsing a syntax error reported from pyflakes when checking a Python script in run:. (#411)

  - run: print(
    shell: python

• Skip checking exclude: items in matrix: when they are constructed from ${{ }} dynamically. (#414)

  matrix:
    foo: ['a', 'b']
    exclude:
      # actionlint complained this value didn't exist in matrix combinations
      - foo: ${{ env.EXCLUDE_FOO }}

• Fix checking exclude: items when ${{ }} is used in nested arrays at matrix items.

  matrix:
    foo:
      - ["${{ fromJSON('...') }}"]
    exclude:
      # actionlint complained this value didn't match to any matrix combinations
      - foo: ['foo']

• Update popular actions data set. New major versions are added and the following actions are newly added.
  • peaceiris/actions-hugo
  • actions/attest-build-provenance
  • actions/add-to-project
  • octokit/graphql-action
• Update Go dependencies to the latest.
• Reduce the size of actionlint executable by removing redundant data from popular actions data set.
  • x86_64 executable binary size was reduced from 6.9MB to 6.7MB (2.9% smaller).
  • Wasm binary size was reduced from 9.4MB to 8.9MB (5.3% smaller).
• Describe how to integrate actionlint to Pulsar Edit in the document. (#408, thanks @mschuchard)
• Update outdated action versions in the usage document. (#413, thanks @naglis)

• Add macOS 14 runner labels for Apple Silicon support. The following labels are added. (thanks @harryzcy, #392)
  • macos-14
  • macos-14-xlarge
  • macos-14-large
• Remove ubuntu-18.04 runner label from runners list since it is no longer supported. (#363)
• Allow glob patterns in self-hosted-runner.labels configuration. For example, the following configuration defines any runner labels prefixed with private-linux-. (thanks @kishaningithub, #378)

  self-hosted-runner:
    labels:
      - private-linux-*

• Fix a race condition bug when -format option is used for linting multiple workflow files. Thanks @ReinAchten-TomTom for your help on the investigation. (#370)
• Fix a race condition due to conflicts between some goroutine which starts to run shellcheck process and other goroutine which starts to wait until all processes finish.
• The popular actions data set was updated to the latest and the following actions were newly added. (thanks @jmarshall, #380)
  • google-github-actions/auth
  • google-github-actions/get-secretmanager-secrets
  • google-github-actions/setup-gcloud
  • google-github-actions/upload-cloud-storage
  • pulumi/actions
  • pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish
• Add support for larger runner labels. The following labels are added. (thanks @therealdwright, #371)
  • windows-latest-8-cores
  • ubuntu-latest-4-cores
  • ubuntu-latest-8-cores
  • ubuntu-latest-16-cores
• The following WebHook types are supported for pull_request event.
  • enqueued
  • dequeued
  • milestoned
  • demilestoned
• Explain how to control shellckeck behavior in the shellcheck rule document. Use SHELLCHECK_OPTS environment variable to pass arguments to shellcheck. See the shellcheck's official document for more details.

  # Enable some optional rules
  SHELLCHECK_OPTS='--enable=avoid-nullary-conditions' actionlint
  # Disable some rules
  SHELLCHECK_OPTS='--exclude=SC2129' actionlint
  

• Explicitly specify docker.io host name in pre-commit hook. (thanks @gotmax23, #382)
• Explain how to report issues and send patches in CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Fix the link to super-linter project. (thanks @zkoppert, #376)
• Add the instruction to install actionlint via the Arch Linux's official repository. (thanks @sorairolake, #381)
• Prefer fixed revisions in the pre-commit usage. (thanks @corneliusroemer, #354)
• Add instructions to use actionlint with Emacs. (thanks @tirimia, #341)
• Add instructions to use actionlint with Vim and Neovim text editors.
• Add actionlint.RuleBase.Config method to get the actionlint configuration passed to rules. (thanks @hugo-syn, #387)
• Add actionlint.ContainsExpression function to check if the given string contains ${{ }} placeholders or not. (thanks @hugo-syn, #388)
• Support Go 1.22 and set the minimum supported Go version to 1.18 for x/sys package.
• Update Go dependencies to the latest.

• Several template fields and template actions were added. All fields and actions are listed in the document. Please read it for more details. (#311)
  • By these additions, now actionlint can output the result in the SARIF format. SARIF is a format for the output of static analysis tools used by GitHub CodeQL. the example Go template to format actionlint output in SARIF.

    actionlint -format "$(cat /path/to/sarif_template.txt)" > output.json

  • allKinds returns the kinds (lint rules) information as an array. You can include what lint rules are defined in the command output.
  • toPascalCase converts snake case (foo_bar) or kebab case (foo-bar) into pascal case (FooBar).
• Report an error when the condition at if: is always evaluated to true. See the check document to know more details. (#272)

  # ERROR: All the following `if:` conditions are always evaluated to true
  - run: echo 'Commit is pushed'
    if: |
      ${{ github.event_name == 'push' }}
  - run: echo 'Commit is pushed'
    if: "${{ github.event_name == 'push' }} "
  - run: echo 'Commit is pushed to main'
    if: ${{ github.event_name == 'push' }} && ${{ github.ref_name == 'main' }}

• Fix actionlint didn't understand ${{ }} placeholders in environment variable names. (#312)

  env:
    "${{ steps.x.outputs.value }}": "..."

• Fix type of matrix row when some expression is assigned to it with ${{ }} (#285)

  strategy:
    matrix:
      test:
        # Matrix rows are assigned from JSON string
        - ${{ fromJson(inputs.matrix) }}
  steps:
    - run: echo ${{ matrix.test.foo.bar }}

• Fix checking exclude of matrix was incorrect when some matrix row is dynamically constructed with ${{ }}. (#261)

  strategy:
    matrix:
      build-type:
        - debug
        - ${{ fromJson(inputs.custom-build-type) }}
      exclude:
        # 'release' is not listed in 'build-type' row, but it should not be reported as error
        # since the second row of 'build-type' is dynamically constructed with ${{ }}.
        - build-type: release

• Fix checking exclude of matrix was incorrect when object is nested at row of the matrix. (#249)

  matrix:
    os:
      - name: Ubuntu
        matrix: ubuntu
      - name: Windows
        matrix: windows
    arch:
      - name: ARM
        matrix: arm
      - name: Intel
        matrix: intel
    exclude:
      # This should exclude { os: { name: Windows, matrix: windows }, arch: {name: ARM, matrix: arm } }
      - os:
          matrix: windows
        arch:
          matrix: arm

• Fix data race when actionlint.yml config file is used by multiple goroutines to check multiple workflow files. (#333)
• Check keys' case sensitivity. (#302)

  steps:
    # ERROR: 'run:' is correct
    - ruN: echo "hello"

• Add number as input type of workflow_dispatch event. (#316)
• Check max number of inputs of workflow_dispatch event is 10.
• Check numbers at timeout-minutes and max-parallel are greater than zero.
• Add Go APIs to define a custom rule. Please read the code example to know the usage.
  • Make some RuleBase methods public which are useful to implement your own custom rule type. (thanks @hugo-syn, #327, #331)
  • OnRulesCreated field is added to LinterOptions struct. You can modify applied rules with the hook (add your own rule, remove some rule, ...).
• Add NewProject() Go API to create a Project instance.
• Fix tests failed when sources are downloaded from .tar.gz link. (#307)
• Improve the pre-commit document to explain all pre-commit hooks by this repository.
• Clarify the regular expression syntax of -ignore option is RE2. (#320)
• Use ubuntu-latest runner to create winget release. (thanks @sitiom, #308)
• Update popular actions data set, available contexts, webhook types to the latest.
  • Fix typo in watch webhook's types (thanks @suzuki-shunsuke, #334)
  • Add secret_source property to github context. (thanks @asml-mdroogle, #339)
  • Many new major releases are added to the popular actions data set (including actions/checkout@v4).
• Use Go 1.21 to build release binaries.
• Update Go dependencies to the latest. (thanks @harryzcy, #322)

• Parse new syntax at runs-on:. Now runs-on: can have group: and labels: configurations. Please read the official document for more details. (#280)

  runs-on:
    group: ubuntu-runners
    labels: ubuntu-20.04-16core

• Add support for macOS XL runners. macos-latest-xl, macos-13-xl, macos-12-xl labels are available at runs-on:. (#299, thanks @woa7)
• Find Git project directory from -stdin-filename command line argument. Even if the workflow content is passed via stdin, actionlint can recognize reusable workflows depended by the workflow using file path passed at -stdin-filename argument. (#283)
• Fix order of errors is not deterministic when multiple errors happen at the same location (file name, line number, column number). It happens only when building actionlint with Go 1.20 or later.
• Fix type name of watch webhook.
• Fix type of matrix row (property of matrix context) when ${{ }} is used in the row value. (#294)
• Fix go install ./... doesn't work. (#297)
• Update actionlint pre-commit hook to use Go toolchain. Now pre-commit automatically installs actionlint command so you don't need to install it manually. Note that this hook requires pre-commit v3.0.0 or later. For those who don't have Go toolchain, the previous hook is maintained as actionlint-system hook. Please read the document to know the usage details. (#301, thanks @Freed-Wu and @dokempf)
• Update Go dependencies to the latest.
• Update npm dependencies for playground to the latest and fix optimizing Wasm binary with wasm-opt.
• Update popular actions data set. New major versions and new inputs of many popular actions are now supported like sparse-checkout input of actions/checkout action. (#305)
• Fix outdated document for Problem Matchers. (#289, thanks @carlcsaposs-canonical)
• Fix outdated links in document for super-linter. (#303, thanks @gmacario)
• Automate releasing the Winget package with GitHub Actions. (#276, #293, thanks @sitiom)

• Add support for configuration variables. However actionlint doesn't know what variables are defined in the repository on GitHub. To notify them, you need to configure your variables in your repository.

  config-variables:
    - DEFAULT_RUNNER
    - DEFAULT_TIMEOUT

• Fix type error when inputs context is shared by multiple events. (#263)
• Add document for how to install actionlint with winget. (#267, thanks @sitiom)
• Add document for how to integrate actionlint to trunk.io. (#269, thanks @dapirian)
• Add document for how to install actionlint with Nix package manager. (#273, thanks @diohabara)
• Update popular actions data set to the latest
• Add support for Go 1.20 and build release binaries with Go 1.20

• Fix using vars context causes 'undefined context' error. This context is for 'Variables' feature which was recently added to GitHub Actions. (#260)

  - name: Use variables
    run: |
      echo "repository variable : ${{ vars.REPOSITORY_VAR }}"
      echo "organization variable : ${{ vars.ORGANIZATION_VAR }}"
      echo "overridden variable : ${{ vars.OVERRIDE_VAR }}"
      echo "variable from shell environment : $env_var"

• Fix 'no property' error on accessing some github context's properties which were added recently. (#259)
• Update popular actions data set and add some new actions to it
  • actions/dependency-review-action
  • dtolnay/rust-toolchain
• Playground is improved by making the right pane sticky. It is useful when many errors are reported. (#253, thanks @ericcornelissen)
• Update Go modules dependencies and playground dependencies