First commit pushed triggers 2 workflow runs

[johnstonmatt]

Bug

Body

The first commit to a GitHub repository with a on: push: event workflow results in that action being executed twice. The action running twice per one commit is shown plainly in the Actions view. In our particular use case this represents deploying two clusters to the cloud with Terraform, so the issue has potential to be high-impact and costly for users.

Reproduction Steps

1. Create an empty GitHub repo
2. Add a workflow that is triggered by a push event to main
3. Make your first commit by pushing up the workflow
4. Observe that the workflow is executed twice for a single commit

I've made a demo repo: https://github.com/polyseam/dupe-bug-demo

[johndietz]

wanted to weigh in that we at kubefirst.io have also found this to be the case with our platforms that install to github. with high frequency, we create initial empty github repositories, and then push an initial commit to those repositories with repo content that includes github actions workflows designed to trigger from main. the initial push of the repo always fires 2 identical github actions pipelines off of the single commit sha pushed. for our particular workflow, one will pass and one will fail due to the git commit sha being a part of our immutable container naming convention. agree this should be a github issue.

[johnstonmatt]

@martinwoodward has confirmed this issue and a fix should be coming down the pipe soon

[MissaelHRC]

Hi @johnstonmatt reading your last answer, do you know if the GitHub team has an issue opened to fix it?
I have the same issue with my team triggering a workflow after installing a GitHub App that we are developing. Thanks!

[thantzin-soe]

same here.I add a workflow to my laravel project and then push to my repository first time,then the workflow trigger twice.But in the next commit the workflow trigger once.Can someone explain me that this is a bug from github itself or something?

[johnstonmatt]

This is a bug in GitHub itself

[johnstonmatt]

This is still an issue as of today
https://github.com/polyseam/dupe-demo/actions

@MissaelHRC

There is a ticket:

[MissaelHRC]

@johnstonmatt Thanks for the answer, I'll continue to follow this issue.

[bowtie-ltsa]

Here's my work-around, for whatever it is worth:

Background:

• I am using golang to create repositories.
• The 1st commit is the one created through "autoInit" by github (i.e. it contains a single oneliner README file.)
• The 2nd commit contains the "real" payload, a set of files that includes workflow.

When that 2nd commit triggers two workflow runs instead of one, it is catastrophic for my use case.

Work-around for this nasty bug:

• Ensure that the 2nd commit contains a single benign workflow, and just let the bug do its thing.
• Then it is safe to make the 3rd commit with the "real" payload. (There is no need to wait until the buggy benign workflow finishes.)

Work-around attempts that did not work reliably:

• bug still present: Wait 2 seconds between autoInit and 2nd commit.
• bug still present: Ensure the 2nd commit is not empty but still contains no workflow at all, then put the real payload in 3rd commit.

If anyone is interested in my functional work-around, in poorly written golang code, I could post it... not sure how helpful it would be...

[johnstonmatt]

thanks for sharing!

we landed on using an action which "locks" out any subsequent runs from being called if there is a run in progress, then releases the lock when it is finished

https://github.com/polyseam/cndi/blob/d3f684284755fb353f1497285e626e867058f350/src/outputs/cndi-run-workflow.ts#LL28C1-L28C1

[alexpotv]

Also having this issue! Using a template repository, which contains a workflow to initialize Terraform. Upon cloning the template, the initial commit triggers two simultaneous runs of the workflow, resulting in a lock error.

[JoshMcCullough]

This is an issue for us but is not catastrophic as it may be with others. But it is marginally annoying. I'll try @bowtie-ltsa's suggestion of pushing a benign workflow first.

[Twipped]

FYI you can work around this by adding a concurrency interrupt to your first workflow job.

jobs:
  my-job:
    concurrency:
      group: ${{ github.head_ref }}-init
      cancel-in-progress: true
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

This will interrupt the first execution before it even starts.

[gm3dmo]

Engineering advised that a fix has been shipped.

[olga-ibragimova-mckinsey]

@johnstonmatt Hi Matt)) do you have any updates regarding the ticket you've created? We face the same issue with triggering pipelines twice

[johnstonmatt]

Hi Olga, I believed that the fix was shipped, maybe there has been a regression?

[nathan-harvestwell]

I'm seeing my CI actions run on twice every single push to the repo with just the default config. It's almost as annoying as Dependabot being automatically enabled without my consent.

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]