Deploy action only appears to work when committing to master branch

[jamesmrollins]

Hi All - I have a rather low skill-level in this arena, but have spent several days experimenting and looking for answers on my own. So, thanks in advance for you help.

Application: I am rendering a bookdown manual from markdown files using executables from r-lib. Then these html files are deposited to a gh-pages branch to provision a website. The actions supporting this are located in the master branch and triggered when there is a push to Master. In this version (code below), the rendering and deployment processes work, when someone edits a source .md file in the gh-pages branch and then commits another, unrelated file directly to Master.

Code

 on:
   push:
      branches: [ master ] 

 name: renderbook

 jobs:
  bookdown:
     name: Render-Book
     runs-on: macOS-latest
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    with:
      ref: gh-pages
  - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r@v1
  - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-pandoc@v1
  - name: Install rmarkdown
    run: Rscript -e 'install.packages(c("rmarkdown","bookdown","HelpersMG","readr"))'
    
  - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-tinytex@v1
  - name : install tinytex
    run: tlmgr --version

  - name: Render Book
    run: |
         Rscript -e 'bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::epub_book", output_dir="docs")'
         Rscript -e 'bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::word_document2", output_dir="docs")'
         Rscript -e 'bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::gitbook", output_dir="docs")'
  - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v1
    with:
      name: docs
      path: docs/
 # deploy to gh pages yml
   build-and-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: bookdown
    steps:
       - name: Checkout 🛎️
         uses: actions/checkout@v2 # If you're using actions/checkout@v2 you must set persist-credentials to false in most cases for the deployment to work correctly.
    with:
           persist-credentials: false
    
       - name: Download Artifacts 🔻 # The built project is downloaded into the 'site' folder.
         uses: actions/download-artifact@v1
         with:
           name: docs
      
       - name: Deploy 🚀
         uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@releases/v3
         with:
           GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
           BRANCH: gh-pages # The branch the action should deploy to.
           FOLDER: docs
           TARGET_FOLDER: docs # The folder the action should deploy.
           CLEAN: true

PROBLEM: We are trying to deploy a branch merge routine where a feature branch is created, files are edited, and committed back to the feature (copy) branch, and the render/deploy actions trigger with a pull request is opened to merge the feature branch with the gh-pages branch. When this code below is implemented in both the gh-pages and the copy feature branch, the action will render, but it doesn't deploy the files to the /doc file. Below is a screenshot of the deploy action report.

I have tried various permutations creating and merging duplicates away from the gh-pages branch, but nothing seems to work except actions triggered on Master as shown above.

Code

on:
 pull_request:
 branches: [ gh-pages ]

 name: renderbook

 jobs:
   bookdown:
     name: Render-Book
     runs-on: macOS-latest
     steps:
       - uses: actions/checkout@v2
         with:
           ref: gh-pages
       - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r@v1
       - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-pandoc@v1
       - name: Install rmarkdown
         run: Rscript -e 'install.packages(c("rmarkdown","bookdown","HelpersMG","readr"))'
    
       - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-tinytex@v1
       - name : install tinytex
         run: tlmgr --version
     
       - name: Render Book
         run: |
              Rscript -e 'bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::epub_book", output_dir="docs")'
              Rscript -e 'bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::word_document2", output_dir="docs")'
              Rscript -e 'bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::gitbook", output_dir="docs")'
       - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v1
         with:
           name: docs
           path: docs/
 # deploy to gh pages yml
   build-and-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: bookdown
    steps:
       - name: Checkout 🛎️
         uses: actions/checkout@v2 # If you're using actions/checkout@v2 you must set persist-credentials to false in most cases for the deployment to work correctly.
         with:
         persist-credentials: false
    
      - name: Download Artifacts 🔻 # The built project is downloaded into the 'site' folder.
        uses: actions/download-artifact@v1
        with:
        name: docs
      
       - name: Deploy 🚀
         uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@releases/v3
         with:
           GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
           BRANCH: gh-pages # The branch the action should deploy to.
           FOLDER: docs
           TARGET_FOLDER: docs # The folder the action should deploy.
           CLEAN: true

Screenshot
When the deploy doesn't work, there is a report on line 54 where the deploy "exits early." This report doesn't happen when triggered from the Master branch.

[JamesIves]

It looks like you're modifying the tree before the commits are made and it's reversing the timeline. Have you tried setting PRESERVE to true in your workflow? In a future version this option will be toggled on by default.

[jamesmrollins]

Hi @JamesIves - Thanks a million for your help! Your suggestion worked perfectly - thank you.