Output to file and comment at the same time.

[jamengual]

Feature Overview

We use the output to file and then pass it to the summary output and other steps happening later, but we need to comment on the PR simultaneously, but since `--output ${{ steps.vars.outputs.summary_file }} disables the PR comment. We had to run the plan twice, which is sometimes really slow.

It would be nice to be able to output to the file and comment to the PR at the same time or even pipe in the plan from a file to then comment on the PR ( although not as nice and requires two command)

reference https://github.com/cloudposse/github-action-atmos-terraform-plan/blob/main/action.yml#L201 ( this one only outputs to file, so I had to duplicate the step to comment to the PR)

Why is the feature needed?

to comment to the PR and output to a file for further processing

note

nothing

[suzuki-shunsuke]

Thank you for your feedback.
We'll consider how to handle this issue.

The workaround is to output the result to a text file.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -u

tfcmt plan -- terraform plan 2>&1 | tee result.txt
code=${PIPESTATUS[0]}
tfcmt --output plan.md plan -- bash -c "cat result.txt && exit "$code""

[jamengual]

that assumes plan.md is an empty file?

[jamengual]

we are running currently like this:

tfcmt \
        --config ${{ github.action_path }}/config/summary.yaml \
        -owner "${{ github.repository_owner }}" \
        -repo "${{ github.event.repository.name }}" \
        -var "target:${{ steps.vars.outputs.component_slug }}" \
        -var "component:${{ inputs.component }}" \
        -var "componentPath:${{ steps.vars.outputs.component_path }}" \
        -var "commitSHA:${{ inputs.sha }}" \
        -var "stack:${{ inputs.stack }}" \
        -var "job:${{ github.job }}" \
        -var "logoImage:${{ inputs.branding-logo-image }}" \
        -var "logoUrl:${{ inputs.branding-logo-url }}" \
        -var "infracost_enabled:${{ steps.config.outputs.enable-infracost }}" \
        -var "driftModeEnabled:${{ inputs.drift-detection-mode-enabled }}" \
        --output ${{ steps.vars.outputs.summary_file }} \
        --log-level $([[ "${{ inputs.debug }}" == "true" ]] && echo "DEBUG" || echo "INFO") \
        plan -- \
          atmos terraform plan ${{ inputs.component }} \
          --stack ${{ inputs.stack }} \
          -out="${{ steps.vars.outputs.plan_file }}" \
          -lock=false \
          -input=false \
          -no-color \
        &> ${TERRAFORM_OUTPUT_FILE}

then I added :

tfcmt --output  ${{ steps.vars.outputs.plan_file }} plan -- bash -c "cat ${TERRAFORM_OUTPUT_FILE}"

but no comment is made

The summary shows up just fine, so the output of the plan is not empty

[jamengual]

I figured it out, and it does work, but it would be much better if this could be implemented.

[jamengual]

It seems that the -patch option does not work when this is set this way, it keeps adding new comments.

[suzuki-shunsuke]

It seems that the -patch option does not work when this is set this way, it keeps adding new comments.

🤔 It's weird. Could you create an issue for this?
I think it's another issue.

[jamengual]

To be honest, implementing an option, would be soooooo much nicer.

look how this look here:
https://github.com/cloudposse/github-action-atmos-terraform-plan/blob/add-cache-and-azure/action.yml#L249