Provide a way to force-cancel actions and improve cancellation feedback

[protiumx]

Describe the enhancement

• Provide a way to force-cancel any action run despite its running conditions.
• Improve feedback in the UI and API when re-evaluating the running conditions did not cancel the action run.

Context
As for today I found myself unable to cancel one action of my workflows.
I understand that due to its setup, the "cancel run" button was not working as I expected.
The conditions that were met:

• The job has a run condition set to always()
• The action ran into a dead-lock

To cancel the action, I tried:

• Use the cancel run in the actions UI.
• I used gh client as follow

gh run cancel <run_id>

Received

✓ Request to cancel workflow submitted.

Non of the steps above provided information whether the action run was cancelled or not.
Looking through the documentation I found this:

To cancel the workflow run, the server re-evaluates if conditions for all currently running jobs. If the condition evaluates to true, the job will not get canceled. For example, the condition if: always() would evaluate to true and the job continues to run. When there is no condition, that is the equivalent of the condition if: success(), which only runs if the previous step finished successfully.

With this in mind, I think I will have to wait 6 hours for the default time out that jobs have.

Code Snippet
To try this out

name: dead-lock
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  run:
    if: always()
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    # force the action to stop
    timeout-minutes: 5
    steps:
        - run: | 
            for i in {0..9999}; do
               sleep 1
            done

Once the action is dispatched try to cancel it
Additional information
Add any other context about the feature here.

NOTE: if the feature request has been agreed upon then the assignee will create an ADR. See docs/adrs/README.md

[ruvceskistefan]

Hi @protiumx,

This issue does not seem to be a problem with the runner application, it concerns the GitHub Actions platform more generally. Could you please post your feedback on the GitHub Community Support Forum which is actively monitored. Using the forum ensures that we route your problem to the correct team. 😃

[GMNGeoffrey]

This is https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/26303. Apparently jobs with "always()" are uncancellable, which is an absolutely wild design decision

[Obi-Dann]

For anyone looking for an answer, it's now possible to force-cancel actions via GH API https://github.blog/changelog/2023-09-21-github-actions-force-cancel-workflows/
https://docs.github.com/en/rest/actions/workflow-runs?apiVersion=2022-11-28#force-cancel-a-workflow-run

[Qix-]

What's the chance of adding this as a UI button, now? Do I really have to make a PAT token just to clear a stuck workflow?

[ABazso]

Please add this capability to the UI as well.

[kopax-polyconseil]

I just opened this SO thread : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77799456/github-action-stuck-and-not-cancellable

Because the documentation sell a force cancel workflow that definitely does not work https://docs.github.com/en/rest/actions/workflow-runs?apiVersion=2022-11-28#force-cancel-a-workflow-run

Consequence is that it breaks all our CIs....

Is there a way to abort a workflow totally ?

[duaneking]

Why was this closed when people are still requesting a fix?

[dagansandler]

For reference, in case anyone stumbles upon this in search of an answer, the docs for always actually recommend using !cancelled() rather than always() for most cases (see the warning in the link).

Avoid using always for any task that could suffer from a critical failure, for example: getting sources, otherwise the workflow may hang until it times out. If you want to run a job or step regardless of its success or failure, use the recommended alternative: if: ${{ !cancelled() }}

[Aeolun]

I run into this once in a while, only to find this issue and curse whoever decided to implement it like this...