Github Actions to see changed files

Question

I am trying to use actions to post a comment on a PR if a file has changed but my action is unable to see the changes.

jobs:
  check:
    runs-on: self-hosted
    permissions:
      pull-requests: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 2

      - name: Get all changed files and echo alert
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: *******************
        run: |

          git diff --name-status

or if I change it to git status it outputs a message saying no changes working tree is clean, but I know one file has changed.

I tried using v1 instead of v2 but that doesn't work either.

Does anyone have any ideas on what i am doing wrong or how I can get this working?

Answer 1

Checkout is just "checking out" clean repository state for a given commit or PR.

If you expect to get changes files from PR, you can do it by using external actions, for examples:

- name: Get changed files using defaults
  id: changed-files
  uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v32
- name: List all added files
  run: |
     for file in ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs. modified_files }}; do
        echo "$file was modified."
     done