Add GitHub workflow for automatically updating index.js

[Marcono1234]

See discussion starting at #175 (comment)

This pull request changes the workflows so that:

• Pull requests are no longer expected to update dist/index.js (respectively the now named action/index.js)
• Push events on the main branch will build and update action/index.js if needed, and push the changes as separate commit

To achieve this, the dist/index.js is now ignored by Git and is instead copied to action/index.js by CI. This prevents users accidentally committing that file when creating pull requests.

Here is an example workflow run which detected changes and created a commit:

• Workflow run
• Commit: https://github.com/Marcono1234/wrapper-validation-action/commit/52614f5f89f4f356f73f9156bfa4c07001124716

Limitations:

• The push event for updating action/index.js does not trigger any other workflows, see action documentation
• This might need additional configuration if main is a protected branch (which it probably should be?), see action documentation
  (might depend on who is the "actor" triggering the workflow; so maybe if a member who is allowed to push to protected branches merged the pull request to main, then it works without additional configuration?)

Feedback is appreciated! If this is not an approach you want to use, feel free to close this pull request.

[Marcono1234]

The "Check no dist update" workflow fails because this pull request intentionally creates the initial version of action/index.js (by renaming the existing dist/index.js).

[Marcono1234]

@bigdaz, could you please have a look and let me know what you think about this approach and the implementation?
As mentioned above, the "Check no dist update" job fails intentionally for this PR.

[bigdaz]

Thanks for this: it looks good in general.
Is there a reason that we need to change from dist/index.js to actions/index.js? This is inconsistent with other actions I maintain.
Instead, would it be possible to have npm run build generate the outputs into a different (ignored) location, and have this workflow copy them into dist?

[Marcono1234]

Is there a reason that we need to change from dist/index.js to actions/index.js?

To solve the problem this pull request tries to address, it probably needs two directories, one where the regular build is writing files to (currently dist) and one which is checked into Git (currently actions). But the actions name is arbitrary.

Instead, would it be possible to have npm run build generate the outputs into a different (ignored) location, and have this workflow copy them into dist?

Yes I think that should be possible. Maybe a name starting with dist-... might be good to keep it grouped. What about dist-temp or dist-pre or similar? Or do you have any specific name in mind?

[bigdaz]

Or do you have any specific name in mind?

Not really. We could use build since that's something Gradle devs would recognize. But it will be relatively easy to change if we can come up with something better.

[Marcono1234]

Sorry for not having updated this pull request yet, I will try to do so in the next days.
Or is this still relevant now that this action will be / has been migrated to https://github.com/gradle/actions (#198)?

[bigdaz]

Thanks @Marcono1234 I've adapted this PR to implement similar functionality in https://github.com/gradle/actions/blob/main/.github/workflows/ci-update-dist.yml

It's working pretty well and has simplified the development process, so thanks a lot for the inspiration!

You're right that it's probably not worth working on it here, since the when #198 is complete there will no longer be any 'dist' directory in this repository.

[Marcono1234]

Ok, I will close this pull request then. I am glad the changes proposed by this pull request were useful for you nonetheless though.