Scheduled Gitea Actions sometimes run on non-default merged branches

[andrewimeson]

Description

Scheduled Gitea Actions are supposed to run on the default branch of the containing repository, but sometimes they run on branches that aren't the default. I haven't done enough testing to narrow down the circumstances, but it has so far always been a merged-and-deleted branch.

Given a workflow file like this:

---
on:  # yamllint disable-line rule:truthy
  schedule:
    - cron: '*/15 * * * *'
jobs:
  backup:
    name: Backup DNS Zones
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container: catthehacker/ubuntu:act-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Debug git status
        run: |
          git status

      - name: Debug Gitea Actions variables
        run: |-
          echo "GITHUB_HEAD_REF: $GITHUB_HEAD_REF"
          echo "GITHUB_REF: $GITHUB_HEAD_REF"
          echo "GITHUB_EVENT_NAME: $GITHUB_EVENT_NAME"
          echo "…and a change to the workflow file to see if that is part of it"

If you create that in the default branch, it will run in the default branch as scheduled. However, once you create a PR and merge it (with branch auto-deletion turned on) it will start running the schedule on the deleted branch instead.

I've created a repository on try.gitea.io, but the screenshots are from my own instance.

Gitea Version

1.21.0

Can you reproduce the bug on the Gitea demo site?

Yes

Log Gist

No response

Screenshots

Git Version

No response

Operating System

No response

How are you running Gitea?

Official Helm chart v9.5.1

Database

PostgreSQL

[metalMajor]

Hello, I can confirm that I have the same situation. Gitea 1.21.2. It was also a merge-and-delete. Now the action runs each time according to the schedule and indeed does not find the deleted branch then of course. Have you found a way to stop it from running?

For me, the schedule for my master branch even stopped running and now it's only the "deleted" branch that triggers according the schedule. It's like it took it's place somehow.

[wxiaoguang]

It might have been fixed by fix empty ref for cron workflow runs (#28640) #28647

Could you try 1.21 nightly?

[metalMajor]

it doesn't help, it still ran the deleted branch:

[wxiaoguang]

Hmm, it seems that it needs a complete fix (The Gitea forks don't seem having the proper fix either).

If I understand correctly, maybe the root problem is that the "deleted" branch shouldn't trigger the schedule action? I haven't looked into the problem, maybe someone who have written&reviewed the code could help to figure out. Correct me if I am wrong.

[metalMajor]

yes that is indeed the case, the deleted branch is triggering the schedule action, and not the default branch which is "master" in my case.

[metalMajor]

I pushed again to "master" branch, directly, without a pull request, and now my schedule ran from the master branch again, and the "deleted" one was not run, so that is a workaround it seems. But I hope I don't have the problem again for every pull request 🤞

[lunny]

I'm working on this issue.