Support YAML anchors

[umarcor]

With new workflow syntax features (https://github.blog/changelog/2019-10-01-github-actions-new-workflow-syntax-features/) it is possible to define environment variables per workflow, per job or per step. However, there is no mechanism to set some environment variables for some steps only. In some contexts, it is desirable to make some secrets available to the last step in each job, but not to all other intermediate steps. See, for example, the usage of DOCKER_USER and DOCKER_PASS in https://github.com/dbhi/docker/blob/master/.github/workflows/push.yml.

Supporting YAML anchors would allow to define the envvars once only:

  - env: &docker_cred
      DOCKER_USER: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_USER }}
      DOCKER_PASS: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_PASS }}

and

  - env:
      <<: *docker_cred

[ethomson]

Hi @umarcor - thanks for bringing this up. Indeed we do not support YAML anchors at the moment, but this is something that we're tracking and will consider adding support for.

I'm going to close this issue here - this repository contains the starter workflows that we suggest during new workflow creation, and not the runner which would actually parse YAML. So this isn't a good repository to track this issue.

If you have more feedback for us, please let us know.

[superarts]

Are YAML anchors still not supported? I added anchors in my workflow and got:

Workflow does not exist or does not have a workflow_dispatch trigger in this branch.
Learn more about manual workflows

[umarcor]

@ethomson since your last comment, repo actions/runner was created. Do you mind, please, reopening this issue and transferring it there?