Hang on Windows after "Adding to the cache ..."

[kevinoid]

Description:
In one of my repositories, actions/setup-node hangs after "Adding to the cache ..." until the job times out.

Action version:
v3

Platform:

• Ubuntu
• macOS
• Windows

Runner type:

• Hosted
• Self-hosted

Tools version:
I've observed the error with node-version: '14.18' and node-version: '>=17.1'.

Repro steps:

I'm observing the issue in my eslint-config-kevinoid repository. I've created a minimal workflow which reproduces the issue which produced this failing workflow run.

Minimal Workflow Issue Reproduction YAML

name: Failing Workflow
on:
  push: {}
  workflow_dispatch: {}
jobs:
  test:
    name: Node ${{ matrix.node }} ${{ matrix.arch }} on ${{ matrix.os }}
    timeout-minutes: 5
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        arch:
        - x64
        os:
        - windows-latest
        node:
        - '14.18'
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Set up Node.js ${{ matrix.node }}
      uses: actions/setup-node@v3
      with:
        node-version: ${{ matrix.node }}
        architecture: ${{ matrix.arch }}
        check-latest: ${{ matrix.node == '*' }}

Note that the 5 minute timeout in the reproduction was added arbitrarily to make the issue easier to test and demonstrate. The original workflow actions/setup-node@v3 failed after 6 hours.

Also note that the issue does not occur if the actions/checkout@v3 step is removed.

Expected behavior:
The actions/setup-node@v3 step would complete in a reasonable amount of time.

Actual behavior:
The actions/setup-node@v3 step does not complete after 5 minutes (or 6 hours).

[dmitry-shibanov]

Hello @kevinoid. Thank you for your report. We'll investigate the issue.

[kevinoid]

@dmitry-shibanov Were you able to investigate the issue? Is there anything else that I can do to assist? It appears that builds are still hanging in "Adding to the cache ...".

[dusan-trickovic]

Hello, @kevinoid ! I'm sorry for the late response, I just wanted to give you a little ping to see if your issue resolved in the meantime? :)

[kevinoid]

Hi @dusan-trickovic, Thanks for checking in! Nope, it's still not resolved. Is there anything I can do to help investigate?

[dusan-trickovic]

Understood. I will investigate it and reach out to you again when I have a solution or if I need some more clarification (or at least when I have some updates / suggestions). Thank you very much for your cooperation! :)

[kevinoid]

I've determined the cause of the issue: The invocation of C:\npm\prefix\yarn.cmd --version in printEnvDetailsAndSetOutput() hangs due to the presence of a file named node.js in the repository. This occurs because of a regression (npm/cmd-shim#64 npm/cmd-shim#71) in the .cmd shim generated for yarn by recent versions of npm which invokes node.js instead of node.exe.

Although the root cause of the issue is not in setup-node, I would suggest adding a reasonable timeout for the --version invocations along with a useful error message to aid future users affected by similar issues.

[dusan-trickovic]

Hi, @kevinoid ! Thanks for the update, I'm glad you've found the culprit behind this issue :) And thank you for the suggestion - I will investigate it and forward it to my team as well :)