@actions/upload-artifact

Warning

actions/upload-artifact@v3 is scheduled for deprecation on November 30, 2024. Learn more. Similarly, v1/v2 are scheduled for deprecation on June 30, 2024. Please update your workflow to use v4 of the artifact actions. This deprecation will not impact any existing versions of GitHub Enterprise Server being used by customers.

Upload Actions Artifacts from your Workflow Runs. Internally powered by @actions/artifact package.

See also download-artifact.

• @actions/upload-artifact
  • v4 - What's new
    • Improvements
    • Breaking Changes
  • Usage
    • Inputs
    • Outputs
  • Examples
    • Upload an Individual File
    • Upload an Entire Directory
    • Upload using a Wildcard Pattern
    • Upload using Multiple Paths and Exclusions
    • Altering compressions level (speed v. size)
    • Customization if no files are found
    • (Not) Uploading to the same artifact
    • Environment Variables and Tilde Expansion
    • Retention Period
    • Using Outputs
      • Example output between steps
      • Example output between jobs
    • Overwriting an Artifact
  • Limitations
    • Number of Artifacts
    • Zip archives
    • Permission Loss
  • Where does the upload go?

v4 - What's new

Important

upload-artifact@v4+ is not currently supported on GHES yet. If you are on GHES, you must use v3.

The release of upload-artifact@v4 and download-artifact@v4 are major changes to the backend architecture of Artifacts. They have numerous performance and behavioral improvements.

For more information, see the

documentation.

There is also a new sub-action,

. For more info, check out that action's README.

Improvements

1. Uploads are significantly faster, upwards of 90% improvement in worst case scenarios.
2. Once uploaded, an Artifact ID is returned and Artifacts are immediately available in the UI and REST API. Previously, you would have to wait for the run to be completed before an ID was available or any APIs could be utilized.
3. The contents of an Artifact are uploaded together into an immutable archive. They cannot be altered by subsequent jobs unless the Artifacts are deleted and recreated (where they will have a new ID). Both of these factors help reduce the possibility of accidentally corrupting Artifact files.
4. The compression level of an Artifact can be manually tweaked for speed or size reduction.

Breaking Changes

1. On self hosted runners, additional firewall rules may be required.

2. Uploading to the same named Artifact multiple times.

   Due to how Artifacts are created in this new version, it is no longer possible to upload to the same named Artifact multiple times. You must either split the uploads into multiple Artifacts with different names, or only upload once. Otherwise you will encounter an error.

3. Limit of Artifacts for an individual job. Each job in a workflow run now has a limit of 500 artifacts.

4. With

   v4.4
   and later, hidden files are excluded by default.

For assistance with breaking changes, see MIGRATION.md.

Note

Thank you for your interest in this GitHub repo, however, right now we are not taking contributions.

We continue to focus our resources on strategic areas that help our customers be successful while making developers' lives easier. While GitHub Actions remains a key part of this vision, we are allocating resources towards other areas of Actions and are not taking contributions to this repository at this time. The GitHub public roadmap is the best place to follow along for any updates on features we’re working on and what stage they’re in.

We are taking the following steps to better direct requests related to GitHub Actions, including:

1. We will be directing questions and support requests to our Community Discussions area

2. High Priority bugs can be reported through Community Discussions or you can report these to our support team https://support.github.com/contact/bug-report.

3. Security Issues should be handled as per our security.md.

We will still provide security updates for this project and fix major breaking changes during this time.

You are welcome to still raise bugs in this repo.

Usage

Inputs

Outputs

Examples

Upload an Individual File

Upload an Entire Directory

Upload using a Wildcard Pattern

Upload using Multiple Paths and Exclusions

For supported wildcards along with behavior and documentation, see @actions/glob which is used internally to search for files.

If a wildcard pattern is used, the path hierarchy will be preserved after the first wildcard pattern:

path/to/*/directory/foo?.txt =>
    ∟ path/to/some/directory/foo1.txt
    ∟ path/to/some/directory/foo2.txt
    ∟ path/to/other/directory/foo1.txt

would be flattened and uploaded as =>
    ∟ some/directory/foo1.txt
    ∟ some/directory/foo2.txt
    ∟ other/directory/foo1.txt

If multiple paths are provided as input, the least common ancestor of all the search paths will be used as the root directory of the artifact. Exclude paths do not affect the directory structure.

Relative and absolute file paths are both allowed. Relative paths are rooted against the current working directory. Paths that begin with a wildcard character should be quoted to avoid being interpreted as YAML aliases.

Altering compressions level (speed v. size)

If you are uploading large or easily compressable data to your artifact, you may benefit from tweaking the compression level. By default, the compression level is

, the same as GNU Gzip.

The value can range from 0 to 9:

• 0: No compression
• 1: Best speed
• 6: Default compression (same as GNU Gzip)
• 9: Best compression

Higher levels will result in better compression, but will take longer to complete. For large files that are not easily compressed, a value of

is recommended for significantly faster uploads.

For instance, if you are uploading random binary data, you can save a lot of time by opting out of compression completely, since it won't benefit:

But, if you are uploading data that is easily compressed (like plaintext, code, etc) you can save space and cost by having a higher compression level. But this will be heavier on the CPU therefore slower to upload:

Customization if no files are found

If a path (or paths), result in no files being found for the artifact, the action will succeed but print out a warning. In certain scenarios it may be desirable to fail the action or suppress the warning. The

option allows you to customize the behavior of the action if no files are found:

(Not) Uploading to the same artifact

Unlike earlier versions of

, uploading to the same artifact via multiple jobs is not supported with

v4

.

Artifact names must be unique since each created artifact is idempotent so multiple jobs cannot modify the same artifact.

In matrix scenarios, be careful to not accidentally upload to the same artifact, or else you will encounter conflict errors. It would be best to name the artifact with a prefix or suffix from the matrix:

This will result in artifacts like:

,

binary-windows-latest-b

, and so on.

Previously the behavior allowed for the artifact names to be the same which resulted in unexpected mutations and accidental corruption. Artifacts created by upload-artifact@v4 are immutable.

Environment Variables and Tilde Expansion

You can use

in the path input as a substitute for

$HOME

. Basic tilde expansion is supported:

Environment variables along with context expressions can also be used for input. For documentation see context and expression syntax:

For environment variables created in other steps, make sure to use the

expression syntax

Retention Period

Artifacts are retained for 90 days by default. You can specify a shorter retention period using the

input:

The retention period must be between 1 and 90 inclusive. For more information see artifact and log retention policies.

Using Outputs

If an artifact upload is successful then an

output is available. This ID is a unique identifier that can be used with Artifact REST APIs.

Example output between steps

Example output between jobs

Overwriting an Artifact

Although it's not possible to mutate an Artifact, can completely overwrite one. But do note that this will give the Artifact a new ID, the previous one will no longer exist:

Uploading Hidden Files

By default, hidden files are ignored by this action to avoid unintentionally uploading sensitive information.

If you need to upload hidden files, you can use the

input. Any files that contain sensitive information that should not be in the uploaded artifact can be excluded using the

path

:

Hidden files are defined as any file beginning with

or files within folders beginning with

.

. On Windows, files and directories with the hidden attribute are not considered hidden files unless they have the

.

prefix.

Limitations

Number of Artifacts

Within an individual job, there is a limit of 500 artifacts that can be created for that job.

You may also be limited by Artifacts if you have exceeded your shared storage quota. Storage is calculated every 6-12 hours. See the documentation for more info.

Zip archives

When an Artifact is uploaded, all the files are assembled into an immutable Zip archive. There is currently no way to download artifacts in a format other than a Zip or to download individual artifact contents.

Permission Loss

File permissions are not maintained during artifact upload. All directories will have

and all files will have

644

. For example, if you make a file executable using

chmod

and then upload that file, post-download the file is no longer guaranteed to be set as an executable.

If you must preserve permissions, you can

all of your files together before artifact upload. Post download, the

tar

file will maintain file permissions and case sensitivity.

Where does the upload go?

At the bottom of the workflow summary page, there is a dedicated section for artifacts. Here's a screenshot of something you might see:

There is a trashcan icon that can be used to delete the artifact. This icon will only appear for users who have write permissions to the repository.

The size of the artifact is denoted in bytes. The displayed artifact size denotes the size of the zip that

creates during upload. The Digest column will display the SHA256 digest of the artifact being uploaded.