tox -e build does not find version number in GitHub actions

[rkingsbury]

Description of your problem

I can run tox -e build locally and it correctly builds wheels with the correct package version number. However, when I use GitHub actions to build my package, it does not identify the version number, instead resulting in version number such as 0.0.post1.dev1+g0d1df5e, which prevents subsequent publishing to PyPi. See example run

Clearly I have missed an important step when configuring my build environment on GitHub actions, but I can't figure out what it is. Help appreciated!

Contents of release.yml defining the GitHub action

name: release

on:
  release:
    types: [published]

  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  # https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/automatically-generated-release-notes

  deploy:
    name: Upload release to PyPI
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment:
      name: publish
      url: https://pypi.org/p/pyEQL

    permissions:
      id-token: write  # IMPORTANT: this permission is mandatory for trusted publishing

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3

    - uses: actions/setup-python@v4
      with:
        python-version: "3.10"


    - name: Install dependencies
      run: |
        python -m pip install --upgrade pip
        pip install setuptools setuptools_scm wheel tox

    - name: Build packages for distribution
      run: |
        pipx run tox -e clean,build

    - name: Upload to PyPi
      uses: pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish@v1.8.8

**relevant sections of tox.ini **

# Tox configuration file
# Read more under https://tox.readthedocs.org/
# THIS SCRIPT IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN EXAMPLE. MODIFY IT ACCORDING TO YOUR NEEDS!

[tox]
minversion = 3.15
envlist = {py38,py39,py310,py11}-{linux,windows,macos}


[testenv]
description = invoke pytest to run automated tests
isolated_build = True
setenv =
    TOXINIDIR = {toxinidir}
passenv =
    HOME
extras =
    testing
commands =
    pytest {posargs}


[testenv:{clean,build}]
description =
    Build (or clean) the package in isolation according to instructions in:
    https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/build_meta.html#how-to-use-it
    https://github.com/pypa/pep517/issues/91
    https://github.com/pypa/build
# NOTE: build is still experimental, please refer to the links for updates/issues
skip_install = True
changedir = {toxinidir}
deps =
    build: build[virtualenv]
commands =
    clean: python -c 'from shutil import rmtree; rmtree("build", True); rmtree("dist", True)'
    build: python -m build .
# By default `build` produces wheels, you can also explicitly use the flags `--sdist` and `--wheel`

# # To run `tox -e lint` you need to make sure you have a
# # `.pre-commit-config.yaml` file. See https://pre-commit.com
[testenv:lint]
description = Perform static analysis and style checks
skip_install = True
deps = pre-commit
passenv =
    HOMEPATH
    PROGRAMDATA
commands =
    pre-commit run --all-files #{posargs:--show-diff-on-failure}

Please provide the full traceback using the --very-verbose flag.
See GitHub action failed run

Versions and main components

• PyScaffold Version: 4.5
• Python Version: 3.10
• How did you install PyScaffold: pip

[abravalheri]

Hi @rkingsbury, I wonder if you need to specify fetch-tags: true of fetch-depth: 0 for the actions/checkout step so that setuptools-scm can use the VCS information to infer the version... Have you tried that?

You can have a look on https://github.com/pyscaffold/pyscaffold/blob/master/src/pyscaffold/templates/github_ci_workflow.template to see how we do that in the Github Actions template.

[rkingsbury]

Hi @rkingsbury, I wonder if you need to specify fetch-tags: true of fetch-depth: 0 for the actions/checkout step so that setuptools-scm can use the VCS information to infer the version... Have you tried that?

You can have a look on https://github.com/pyscaffold/pyscaffold/blob/master/src/pyscaffold/templates/github_ci_workflow.template to see how we do that in the Github Actions template.

Thank you @abravalheri , this seems to have fixed it! Although actually the tag-fetching behavior of actions/checkout is the subject of an active issue: actions/checkout#701 , and setting fetch-tags: true by itself did not work. So in the end, I just set fetch-depth: 0

steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      with:
        fetch-depth: 0