Possible to use action offline?

[ravensorb]

I am looking to understand if there is a way to use this action without being connected. I am using act as a locally runner and when I try to execute the metadata action I get an error about not being able to get the commit date. Shouldn't it get that from the local git log rather than reaching out to github?

This is what has me thinking its reaching out:

[Docker Build/build] [DEBUG] 💬 ::debug::Failed to get commit date from GitHub API: Not Found

Note - I have tried setting the context to "workflow" and that didn't seem to help.

[polarathene]

There was an issue reported in Nov 2024 with a similar failure:

• It was unclear if it was from a self-hosted runner or something like Act.
• The fix was available since v5.6.1 (published in Nov 2024).

It'd be helpful if you shared what version of the action you were using.

---

The related code for that mentioned fix was to fallback to new Date() in the catch statement below (which is where your error comes from):

metadata-action/src/context.ts

Lines 121 to 136 in ed95091

	// fallback to github api for commit date
	try {
	const commit = await toolkit.github.octokit.rest.repos.getCommit({
	owner: GitHub.context.repo.owner,
	repo: GitHub.context.repo.repo,
	ref: sha
	});
	if (commit.data.commit.committer?.date) {
	return new Date(commit.data.commit.committer.date);
	}
	throw new Error('Committer date not found');
	} catch (error) {
	core.debug(`Failed to get commit date from GitHub API: ${error.message}`);
	return new Date();
	}
	}

I'm not familiar enough with Act or that Octokit action (which does have docs about configuration for proxy servers), but it might be a common enough in actions that I expect if your self-hosted setup has a compatible API that you can have traffic directed there instead.

In this case it's logic to get the commit date for {{ commit_date }} expression (if you even use that), and when it fails like it did you'll just get the equivalent of using the {{ date }} expression (which aside from format string, is the same behaviour used for date by default for the image.created label/annotation.

---

Note - I have tried setting the context to "workflow" and that didn't seem to help.

For this action, the default context input is already workflow, and that is what triggers that commit date logic.

There's a separate function used instead when you have context: git set, which would avoid the octokit call and infer from git context available (I'm not too familiar with the details on this as I've only briefly glanced of the source):

metadata-action/src/context.ts

Lines 83 to 90 in ed95091

	async function getContextFromGit(): Promise<Context> {
	const ctx = await Git.context();
	return {
	commitDate: await Git.commitDate(ctx.sha),
	...ctx
	} as Context;
	}

[diktamxx]

I also wonder if local testing is possible. But it seems not to work. Even though I set "context: git"

[ravensorb]

@diktamxx I forked this action and removed all of the dependencies on GitHub specifically. It is a 100% compatible drop in replacement as I did not change any functionality. Feel free to give it a try: https://github.com/LiquidLogicLabs/git-action-docker-metadata