What conditions does {{workflow.status}} in ExitHandler use to determine success or failure?

[panicboat]

📝 https://argo-workflows.readthedocs.io/en/latest/variables/#exit-handler

Perform the following steps in the ExitHandler, and if one of the steps fails, the Workflow itself marks it as failed, but a successful step returns success.
Shouldn't the success or failure of the workflow itself be expected in the ExitHandler?

metadata:
  name: lovely-poochenheimer
  namespace: default
  labels:
    example: 'true'
spec:
  onExit: exit-handler
  entrypoint: argosay
  templates:
    - name: argosay
      container:
        name: main
        image: argoproj/argosay:v2
        command:
          - /argosay
        args:
          - echo
          - 'hello argo'
    - name: exit-handler
      steps:
      - - name: success
          template: success
        - name: failure
          template: failure
    - name: success
      steps:
      - - name: python-on-success
          inline:
            container:
              name: main
              image: public.ecr.aws/docker/library/python:alpine3.16
              command: ["python", -c]
              args: ["import random; import sys; exit_code = random.choice([0]); sys.exit(exit_code)"]
        - name: cowsay
          inline:
            container:
              name: main
              image: docker/whalesay
              command:
                - cowsay
              args:
                - "{{workflow.status}}"
    - name: failure
      steps:
      - - name: python-on-failure
          inline:
            container:
              name: main
              image: public.ecr.aws/docker/library/python:alpine3.16
              command: ["python", -c]
              args: ["import random; import sys; exit_code = random.choice([1]); sys.exit(exit_code)"]

[agilgur5]

What conditions does {{workflow.status}} in ExitHandler use to determine success or failure?

As this is an exit handler, it uses the status just before to determine success or failure. Your first step was successful, and so it gets Succeeded.

Perform the following steps in the ExitHandler, and if one of the steps fails, the Workflow itself marks it as failed, but a successful step returns success.

The Workflow's final status is purely based on the status of the final node, which, in this example, included a step that exited non-zero and so was reported as a Failure.

This is indeed a bit confusing, I believe there is an issue or something about this somewhere (need to check). There should perhaps be different behavior for exit handlers (and hooks), but it's a bit confusing either way. This example actually demonstrates that confusion; if the exit handler fails, should the workflow be considered succeeded because it succeeded prior to the exit handler?

EDIT: Ah here's a more recent proposal that would apply here, separating continuation from final status determination: #12530. The explicitness there would resolve any confusion

[panicboat]

I see, then, that it is a known problem.
Thank you very much for your detailed answer.