Question

You maintain a JavaScript action that validates a configuration file passed as an input. When validation fails, the action currently logs an error with console.error() and continues, but the workflow step still reports success and downstream steps run against invalid config. You need the step to be marked as failed and halt the job (assuming default continue-on-error). Using the @actions/core toolkit, what is the correct way to signal failure from the action code?

Accepted Answer

Call core.setFailed('Validation failed: ...'), which writes the error and sets the process exit code to 1

Answer

Call core.warning('Validation failed: ...') so GitHub surfaces the problem in the step annotations

Answer

Emit the workflow command echo "::error::Validation failed" via console.log() without changing the exit code

Answer

Set the action's runs.using key to 'node20-fail' in action.yml so the runner treats non-zero output as failure