Seems like this repo is ABANDONED, alternatives suggestion

[Stas-AbsoluteDesign]

So the last change has been made back to 2020! And new GitHub Actions release will deprecate some critical functionality.
So as a warning to anyone using this plugin - you should consider alternatives.

The original one I was able to find is:
https://github.com/marketplace/actions/changed-files
It has over 800+ stars and seems very popular and still has updates released quite often (3 days ago at the date this issue was created).
Any other alternatives are welcome.

[ravenium]

@Stas-AbsoluteDesign Any idea what specific functionality it's deprecating? I noticed a Node 12 vs 16 warning today (and some set-output warnings) but that was about it.

The only reason I went against tj-actions is that it has to checkout the entire repo to compare for changed files. This wouldn't be the end of the world (only lasts for the life of the workflow) except the tool I am using after it only works on directories and not individual files. I had to basically rm -rf before running the next action (which downloads only the changed files in the PR for processing in the tool action).

I'm sure there's a better way but I haven't stumbled across it yet. (using https://github.com/Bhacaz/checkout-files to grab the individual changed files)

[Stas-AbsoluteDesign]

@ravenium well, the breaking change is set:output GutHub deprecation, there will be a new way of outputting variables.
They aim to put it down later this year: "This will come into effect starting on September 27th". So by the look of no issues or updates made to this repository - it seems that at the date above it will be just completely dead\non-functional.

This issue's purpose is mainly to warn people to avoid using it in the long term run. And as it comes up very early when you search "git changes" on the marketplace and has lots of starts\installs - it is better to draw attention here. Probably, it is even worth adding an "abandoned" label straight to the readme file to show this message on marketplace\github to avoid the further spreading of an abandoned tool.

[subelsky]

Looks like @masesdevelopers came to the rescue with https://github.com/masesgroup/retrieve-changed-files

see #55

[ravenium]

I ended up manually writing git diff commands in a custom action. This definitely looks a bit more elegant :)

[matveym]

Yep, git diff is very easy to do:

           - name: Get changed files
              id: changed-files
              run: |
                  git fetch origin master
                  diff=$(git diff --name-only --diff-filter=AM origin/main..HEAD | tr '\n' ' ')
                  echo "ADDED_MODIFIED=$diff" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"

[necipallef]

Here is my implementation that uses git diff, it doesn't rely on main branch and it outputs every changed file:

           - name: Git clone
              uses: actions/checkout@v4
           - name: Get changed files
              id: changed-files
              run: |
                  git fetch origin $GITHUB_BASE_REF
                  diff=$(git diff --name-only origin/$GITHUB_BASE_REF..HEAD)
                  echo $diff
                  for changed_file in $diff; do
                      echo $changed_file
                  done

[hanseltime]

I know this is late to the party, but I really wanted an up-to-date, tested version of this type of action, so I went ahead and resurrected this repository with non-deprecated APIs, active nodejs, forked repo support, and the ability to filter the files.

https://github.com/marketplace/actions/get-files-that-changed

Feel free to use this if you'd like!

@hanseltime Thanks. I will take a good look at your action.

I was thinking of using git status --porcelain. My primary need is to identify the old name of files that have been renamed.

[hanseltime]

Feel free to check it out @SloopKoning!

In case the documentation on the action isn't clear, the new action (like this one) is strictly doing a Github api call to compare the branches that github has on record. One of the benefits is that you don't end up accidentally have a shallow fetch where you get no diff but in reality there would be a massive diff if there was a deep amount of commits between the branches.

However, this will also not report out any differences that you maybe induced in your CI flow.

- name: create a file
  run: touch new-file.txt
  # This will not show new-file.txt since it is not part of the latest commit to the branch in github
- use: @hanseltimeindustries/get-changed-files
  # This will show new-file.txt since it's referencing the git context of the machine right now
- run: |
    git status --porcelain

@hanseltime This is finally a SH script that identifies the changes that have been maded in my feature branch vs the origin whether that branch name be main or master. I'm filtering out any filename that does not start with "content/" because that is the only directory that I care about in my GH workflow action. within that action I intend to do something like run: sh bin/actions/changed_files.sh At this point the things I plan to do after I have isolated the changes has not been added.

#!/bin/sh

# Debug function
debug() {
  [ "$DEBUG" = "true" ] && echo "[DEBUG] $@" >&2
}

append_unique_existing_filepath() {
    var_name="$1"
    filepath="$2"

    if [[ ! "$filepath" == content/* ]]; then
        debug "Filepath is ignored: $filepath (does not start with 'content/')"
        return
    fi

    if [[ ! "$var_name" == deleted* && ! -e "$filepath" ]]; then
        debug "Filepath does not exist: $filepath"
        return
    fi

    current_value="$(eval "echo \$$var_name")"
    
    if [ -z "$current_value" ]; then
        eval "$var_name=\"$filepath\""
    elif [ "$(echo "$current_value" | grep -c -w "$filepath")" -eq 0 ]; then
        eval "$var_name=\"$current_value:$filepath\""
    fi
}


# Determine the base branch (main or master)
if git show-ref --quiet "refs/remotes/origin/main"; then
  TARGET_BRANCH="origin/main"
elif git show-ref --quiet "refs/remotes/origin/master"; then
  TARGET_BRANCH="origin/master"
else
  echo "Neither origin/main nor origin/master found.  Please set TARGET_BRANCH manually and ensure you are on the feature branch."
  exit 1
fi

# Get the name of the current branch
CURRENT_BRANCH=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)

# Check if we are on a detached HEAD
if [ "$CURRENT_BRANCH" = "HEAD" ]; then
    echo "You are in a detached HEAD state. Please checkout a branch to continue."
    exit 1
fi

debug "TARGET_BRANCH:  $TARGET_BRANCH"
debug "CURRENT_BRANCH: $CURRENT_BRANCH"


# Get the list of commits unique to the current branch.
COMMITS=$(git rev-list --no-merges "$TARGET_BRANCH..$CURRENT_BRANCH")

debug "Commits found: $COMMITS"

if [ -z "$COMMITS" ]; then
  echo "No commits found that are unique to the current branch compared to $TARGET_BRANCH."
  exit 0
fi

added_files=""
deleted_files=""
renamed_files=""
modified_files=""

# Iterate through each commit to detect renames and other changes
for commit in $COMMITS; do
  debug "Processing commit: $commit"

  # Detect renames and other changes in this commit
  DIFF=$(git diff --name-status --find-renames -M "$commit^..$commit")
  debug "Diff output: $DIFF"

  while IFS= read -r line; do  # Use while loop directly instead of piping
    status=$(echo "$line" | cut -c 1) # Get only the first character

    file=$(echo "$line" | sed 's/^[A-Z][[:digit:]]*[[:space:]]*//')

    debug "Line: $line"
    debug "Status: \"$status\""
    debug "File: $file"

    case "$status" in
      R)
        # Renamed file:  RNXXX old_path    new_path
        old_file=$(echo "$file" | awk '{print $1}')
        new_file=$(echo "$file" | awk '{print $2}')
        append_unique_existing_filepath "deleted_files" "$old_file"
        append_unique_existing_filepath "added_files" "$new_file" 
        debug "== R == $file"
        debug "old_file: $old_file"
        debug "new_file: $new_file"
        debug "deleted_files: $deleted_files"
        debug "added_filtes: $added_files"
        ;;
      A)
        append_unique_existing_filepath "added_files" "$file"
        debug "== A == $file"
        debug "added_filtes: $added_files"
        ;;
      M)
        append_unique_existing_filepath "modified_files" "$file"
        debug "== M == $file"
        debug "modified_files: $modified_files"
        ;;
      D)
        append_unique_existing_filepath "deleted_files" "$file"
        debug "== D == $file"
        debug "deleted_files: $deleted_files"
        ;;
      *)
        # Ignore other status codes (e.g., C for copied)
        debug "== * == $file"
        ;;
    esac
  done <<< "$DIFF"  # Use here-string to avoid subshell
done

echo
echo "added_files=$added_files"
echo
echo "deleted_files=$deleted_files"
echo
echo "modified_files=$modified_files"
echo