Mvn is not recognized as a command on Github Actions on Windows a self hosted runner

Question

I set up a simple Github Actions workflow simply to check if my self-hosted Windows Virtual Machine is able to recognize the installed java/git/maven versions.

Versions in the Virtual Machine:

• Microsoft Windows 64 bit
• Java version: jdk1.8.0_202
• Maven version: 3.8.5

Java and Git are correctly recognized however the step checking for maven version fails:

mvn -version

it fails with the following log:

mvn : The term 'mvn' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the 
spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At C:\action-runner\_work\_temp\03b2e64a-9586-4937-b61c-90e0bb0a5d9c.ps1:2 char:1
+ mvn -version
+ ~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (mvn:String) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException
 
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

Below how I set up the environmental variables on the machine:

Environment Variable Screenshot

On the machine mvn command is recognized without any problems, the issue only happens when running the Github workflow yaml. Below the .yaml script also with different attempts to set the enviroment variable from the script itself:

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]


  workflow_dispatch:


jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: [self-hosted, selenium-1]

    steps:

      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      # Attempt 1: FAILS with mvn not recognized log
      - name: Check Maven version
        run: mvn -version

      # Attempt 2: DOES NOT FAIL but it also doesn't do anything (tried other mvn commands and nothing happened)
      - name: Check Maven Version
        run: C:\action-runner\apache-maven-3.8.5\bin\mvn -version

      # Attempt 3 set Maven as env variable with powershell and FAILS with mvn not recognized log
      - name: Set maven path as Env variable
        run: $Env:GITHUB_ENV += ';C:\action-runner\apache-maven-3.8.5\bin'

      # after Attempt 3 launched the mvn command to check if it worked but still failed
      - name: Check Maven version
        run: mvn -version

      # Attempt 4 try to set PATH variable once in the workflow with following log:
      # Error: Unable to process file command 'env' successfully.
      # Error: Invalid environment variable format 'C:\action-runner\apache-maven-3.8.5\bin'
      - name: set PATH Maven
        run: echo "C:\action-runner\apache-maven-3.8.5\bin" >> $env:GITHUB_ENV

Thanks in advance to anyone suggesting a solution.

Answer 1

Solved by adding this Actions from the GitHub Marketplace inside the .yml workflow file:

https://github.com/stCarolas/setup-maven https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-maven