Official `GitHub Action` for `emsdk`

[Danil42Russia]

Hello!
Would you like to create your own official GitHub Action for providing emsdk? Currently, there is a solution from the mymindstorm/setup-emsdk community, but it seems that the author has lost interest in it.

All developers who assemble their solutions via emsdk on GitHub Action would thank you for this.

[sbc100]

Sounds useful. If you would like to contribute such a thing that would be most welcome. Otherwise I can mark the bug as "help wanted" perhaps?

[Danil42Russia]

Ready to help, how do you see it?

1. Write everything from scratch
2. Fork setup-emsdk
3. Contact the author and try to negotiate and transfer setup-emsdk to the organization

[sbc100]

I think its probably a small enough thing that it can just live upstream here in the emsdk repo?

Maybe open an issue in setup-emsdk that you would like to work on it, and maybe upstream the work here? If you and the downstream author decide to keep working in the seperate repo that fine too. We can just like to it from the emsdk readme perhaps. If you want to upstream it here thats fine too

[mymindstorm]

Hi, I am the maintainer of the setup-emsdk GitHub action. I am fully in support of upstreaming it here or under the emscripten-core GitHub team! I don't have enough time to maintain it, so having more oversight from the official project would be very helpful.

[agriyakhetarpal]

+1 from @pyodide's side! I created emscripten-core/setup-emsdk#48 a while back, and @mymindstorm has since come back to maintain it and there is a new release as of today. Like I mentioned in emscripten-core/setup-emsdk#48 (comment), I would be happy to put in time occasionally for maintenance efforts for the action, and it would be great to move it under this GitHub organisation.

[sbc100]

Feel free to send a PR ! Maybe we could even use this in emscripten itself here: https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/blob/bee9a1c2bc39cd33ff2f2b6b4642951eb473dcea/.github/workflows/rebaseline-tests.yml#L30-L43

[Danil42Russia]

Why not just move the repository? That way, we’ll keep the history and builds, and there won’t be a ‘+1’ decision, which we can now say has been taken by the community.

There’s even an official way to do this: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/transferring-a-repository

[mymindstorm]

I think it needs to be a separate repo under emscripten-core for the GitHub actions publishing system to pick it up correctly.

@sbc100 I sent you an invite as a collaborator on the repo. Once you accept I can try and see if it lets me give you enough permissions to transfer the repository to emscripten-core. Otherwise, I'll need to be added as a member of emscripten-core with repo creation permissions.

[mymindstorm]

Yep, using a repo transfer seems important for backwards compatibility. There are 5k+ existing usages of the action, so I would prefer to not leave those users hanging.

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/how-tos/create-and-publish-actions/publish-in-github-marketplace#transferring-an-action-repository

[Danil42Russia]

Otherwise, I'll need to be added as a member of emscripten-core with repo creation permissions.

You don’t have to do it that way. You can first hand the repository over to the emscripten-core maintainer (who has the rights to create new repositories). They will then move it to emscripten-core

[sbc100]

Yep, using a repo transfer seems important for backwards compatibility. There are 5k+ existing usages of the action, so I would prefer to not leave those users hanging.

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/how-tos/create-and-publish-actions/publish-in-github-marketplace#transferring-an-action-repository

I'm curious, do github actions normally need their own repo like this? i.e. is there a 1-to-1 relationship between repos and actions normally?

Also, presumably if we left the old repo in place, the existing users could still use it? They would just need to update the URL when they wanted to upgrade?

I'm not necessarily against the idea of hosting the repo here in emscripten-core, I'm just trying to an idea of the different options we have available to us.

[sbc100]

OK, it does seems like github actions do live in their own repos normally so we would need to create an emscripten-core/emsdk-setup repo to hold this.

If here are reasons to move the whole repo then please let me know the steps. Do you invite me as a maintainer of the repo and then I move it?

[sbc100]

Before we make this move maybe it would be a good idea to update the LICENCE file to match the one in emsdk iself? specifically the "Copyright Emscripten authors" part?

[mymindstorm]

@sbc100

I'm curious, do github actions normally need their own repo like this? i.e. is there a 1-to-1 relationship between repos and actions normally?

Yes, this is typically the case. The normal method of making a new action is to fork one of Github's template repositories. The publishing system relies on GitHub releases and associates the repo with the GitHub marketplace listing. Github enables special UI on certain screens (mostly around the 'new release' form) if you are working on an actions repo that is published on the marketplace.

Every time I make a tagged release from the GitHub web ui, it sends out Dependabot alerts to all repos using the action. So, I would be unsure as to if GitHub would pick up emsdk releases as new action releases or if only releases from the web ui count. Nonetheless, there is enough uncertainty that I think GitHub designed this system around custom actions having their own repositories.

Also, presumably if we left the old repo in place, the existing users could still use it? They would just need to update the URL when they wanted to upgrade?

Yes, with some caveats:

• Users would not receive update notices. GitHub likes to make breaking changes every few years, so this is nontrivial to lose. (example)
• The original action would still be on GitHub marketplace in addition to the emsdk version of the action. There's already two, so a third is undesirable (link). I'm unsure if I can take down the marketplace listing without breaking existing workflows; I can look more into this if not transferring the repo is the way to proceed.

Transferring the repo seems ideal because:

• it is explicitly supported by GitHub in their documentation
• it will alias mymindstorm/setup-emsdk to emscripten-core/setup-emsdk after the transfer, no existing workflows need to be updated
• no need for another marketplace lisiting

If here are reasons to move the whole repo then please let me know the steps. Do you invite me as a maintainer of the repo and then I move it?

I've added you to the repo, are you able to see the "Transfer Repository" button at the bottom of this page? It has a list of all your GitHub organizations and will let you move it to one. https://github.com/mymindstorm/setup-emsdk/settings