Option `optional-tasks` fails with custom runners

[super-brian]

As seen above, it looks like 'ant' is tried but failed. Maybe Path issue?
I ran it on a windows runner.
Regardless, ant has been installed good, so no problem using it.

[cedx]

This error occurs when the PATH environment variable could not be set (or if the ant.bat/ant.cmd could not be run!). Maybe something in your runner prevents the action from modifying this environment variable.

You could try to check if these 3 environment variables are OK:

• ANT_HOME (should print the path to Ant, that is C:\actions-runner\[...])
• PATH (should include the path to the bin subfolder, that is C:\actions-runner\[...]\bin)
• PATHEXT (should include .BAT and/or .CMD)

[super-brian]

After this action, all three of them look fine, but note that the error output is printed 'during' the action.
Maybe need to call 'refreshenv' or something like that inside the action so that env variables are reflected properly?

ANT_HOME=C:\actions-runner_work_tool\ant\1.10.15\x64
,,,
Path=C:\actions-runner_work_tool\ant\1.10.15\x64\bin;C:\actions-runner_work_tool\Java_Temurin-Hotspot_jdk\8.0.422-5\x64\bin;C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python311\Scripts;C:\actions-runner_work_tool\Python\3.11.9\x64\Scripts;C:\actions-runner_work_tool\Python\3.11.9\x64;C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH;C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7;C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin;C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;C:\ProgramData\Chocolatey\bin;C:\Program Files\Git\cmd;;C:\Program Files\Git\bin;;C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin;C:\Program Files\dotnet;C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator.dotnet\tools
PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC;.CPL

[cedx]

the error output is printed 'during' the action.

Good catch! And I think I've found the root cause. When the optional-tasks option is enabled, the action will run the following command:

ant -buildfile fetch.xml -noinput -silent -Ddest=system

BUT: this command is run before the Ant environment variables are properly set.

It works on my machine because I already have a local Ant install declared in the PATH... and it turns out that GitHub hosted runners also have a local Ant install (see https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/windows/Windows2022-Readme.md#project-management). So it also works in GitHub CI with "standard" runners.

I'll get back to you as soon as I've published a fix.

[cedx]

@super-brian Can you check the issue_3 branch?
(i.e. use cedx/setup-ant@issue_3 instead of cedx/setup-ant@v3 in your workflow file)

[super-brian]

OK, I will try now

[super-brian]

This is what I got:

Not sure this is because of the company network or not, though.

[cedx]

It's going to be hard to debug: this error is triggered by Ant itself (but it confirms that Ant is now fully operational).

Ant can't seem to access the following URL:
https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/

EDIT: note that you can still use Ant optional tasks without relying on the optional-tasks option (from the Ant manual: "The optional tasks are packaged together with the core Ant tasks.").
The optional-tasks option only downloads the external libraries/JARs required by these optional tasks. You can manually download the libraries you depend on, and pass them to Ant via the -lib command line parameter.

More info: https://ant.apache.org/manual/install.html#optionalTasks

[cedx]

From my point of view, I consider this issue fixed: Ant now works as expected, despite the impossibility of downloading some dependencies with your runner.
But feel free to reopen this issue (or create another one) if you think there's still something wrong with my code.

EDIT: I've released the version 3.1.1, and updated the v3 tag accordingly.