concurrency with properties now causes "syntax error"

[ablakey]

By making a trivial change to an existing test_build.yaml, GitHub Actions complains about a syntax error in the concurrency property.

Invalid workflow file : .github/workflows/test_build.yaml#L3
You have an error in your yaml syntax on line 3

• I'm running in the github.com Actions environment, not my own.
• If I re-order the properties it remains broken.
• If I remove the properties from concurrency it works again.
• I've validated that the yaml is valid yaml. So the error is confusing and unhelpful.

Note: This exact yaml file has been working for months. The only change I made was to rename a job.

Broken Example

name: Project CI
concurrency:
  cancel-in-progress: true  # "Syntax error" here?
  group: muffins
on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [devel, staging, prod]
  push:
    branches: [devel, staging, prod]
jobs:
  test_ui:
    defaults:
      run:
        working-directory: ./ui
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Install Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: 16
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run validate

Working Example

name: Project CI
concurrency: muffins
on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [devel, staging, prod]
  push:
    branches: [devel, staging, prod]
jobs:
  test_ui:
    defaults:
      run:
        working-directory: ./ui
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Install Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: 16
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run validate

[frenck]

Confirmed on this end as well, workflows for Home Assistant are broken because of this.

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.event.pull_request.number || github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

☝️ is marked as invalid YAML in the group line.

[scottfavre]

We are seeing this across all workflows with concurrency blocks like:

concurrency: 
  group: ${{ github.event.inputs.identifier }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

[kraftbj]

It also appears to be breaking without any changes to the workflow file. https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/actions/runs/1535959387/workflow with the last change on Oct 26th.

[sudo-something]

+1 As of this morning, all my workflows are failing with a syntax error on the line defining the concurrency group value.

[yuriydzobak]

+1

[marcellp]

Yup, we started experiencing this problem at around 15:52 GMT (se the run here with the error). We narrowed it down to the issue to concurrency being
given an object as a value instead of the default (which is string). I spent about an hour debugging it, good to know it was GitHub Actions.

[ebk45]

+1 we've got the same issue on all of our repositories and all syntax issues are pointing at the concurrency property.

[shshe]

Our pipelines have all stopped as well. The Github Actions status at https://www.githubstatus.com/ is still showing "Normal" - is there any acknowledgement of this issue on Github's side?

[justin-masse]

+1 same issue here when using "group" on concurrency

[johnnybenson]

Yes, can't / won't deploy without working jobs.

Removing the concurrency setting all together lets the jobs run successfully.

But you know, don't want to do that.

[darrenswhite]

+1 same issue

[mrparkers]

I have also posted an issue about this on the community page: https://github.uint.cloudmunity/t/breaking-change-to-concurrency-group-syntax/215604

A lot of folks appear to be affected by this.

[famod]

FTR, fails for https://github.com/quarkusio/quarkus as well:

concurrency:
  group: "workflow = ${{ github.workflow }}, ref = ${{ github.event.ref }}, pr = ${{ github.event.pull_request.id }}"
  cancel-in-progress: ${{ github.event_name == 'pull_request' || github.repository != 'quarkusio/quarkus' }}

[drdavella]

Can confirm, getting the same error with this configuration:

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

[amirtoole]

We're experiencing this as well; our current workaround:

concurrency:
  group: ${{ (github.event_name == 'pull_request' && github.event.pull_request.number) || github.head_ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

[ashb]

@amirtoole You are my hero.

[ablakey]

It seems that the original problem is no-longer happening. I reverted to my original .yaml file and it works now without complaining about a syntax error.

[frenck]

Confirmed, reverting worked for us as well. Thanks for keeping us posted @ablakey 👍

[mrparkers]

I don't think I'm the biggest fan of the "silently fix the issue without acknowledging its existence" approach that GitHub seems to have taken here, but I suppose I'm glad that my workflow is working again.

[drdavella]

@mrparkers It's possible they resolved this issue without being aware of this ticket yet, but I agree with what you're saying.

[ablakey]

I'll leave this issue open to give the GitHub Actions team an opportunity to chime in on how it was resolved. It's possibly too soon to assume it was a stealth fix.

[frenck]

@drdavella I'm pretty sure they are aware, as I've had escalated it with them. Lets await and see.

[ashb]

My guess is they noticed by elevated numbers of builds failing and rolled back the change before the support message made it to them.

[JamesKyburz]

seems to be working now

[androidacy-user]

People, do everyone a favor and instead of useless "+1" or "me too" or similar comments, hit the thumbs up button on the original post. Thank you.

[frenck]

In a response from GitHub I was told engineers were on it before reports came in. Anyways, still this issue is open at this point.

[ethomson]

We believe that this has been resolved, so I'm closing this. Please let me know if you're still seeing problems here.

[frenck]

@ethomson Could you elaborate on the incident a bit? Instead of just closing it...?

[ethomson]

This wasn't a runner bug, so I don't have complete details.

We were making a change to the way concurrency is supported for reusable workflows and introduced a bug parsing some workflows with groups specified under concurrency. We rolled back the feature changes when we became aware of problems in production. We've added additional monitoring and tests for these configurations so that we will not have similar issues in the future.

[nitrocode]

hit this issue again and our workaround was to comment it out

# concurrency:
#   group: ${{ github.ref }}
#   cancel-in-progress: true

but @amirtoole's workaround is promising!