Runner logs infrastructure details

[bryanmacfarlane]

Describe the bug
consider this log output:

Run actions/setup-ruby@v1
##[error]Version 2.6.3 not found
##[error]Node run failed with exit code 1

The fact that the action is run with node and the return code protocol is not relevant to the user. the user workflow did not run node - they are setting up ruby. the failure is that 2.6.3 is not found, that's it. The second line should go to trace / _diag

To Reproduce
See setup ruby example above.

Expected behavior
The return code of the handler execution should not go to user logs.

Runner Version and Platform

2.163.1

[bryanmacfarlane]

fyi @TingluoHuang

[dakale]

Would it be useful to just update the error to something like: Action has exited with code N instead? With no error at all it relies on the action itself printing a ##error so sometimes users wont get any message at all depending on the action. We pass/fail the step based on the exit code so that contract is still in place. Could the toolkit expose an exit function that prints and message and exits the process with eg 1? That way people arent left to fend for themselves and have a consistent contract with the actions runner

run: steps also print "##[error]Process completed with exit code 1.", should we consider removing that too? There may be a better way to get consistency across various step types here

[bryanmacfarlane]

Would it be useful to just update the error to something like: Action has exited with code N instead?

The return code is an internal protocol so no, I would just omit.

With no error at all it relies on the action itself printing a ##error so sometimes users wont get any message at all depending on the action.

All the actions and examples show try, catch, error with a message. If a message isn't outputted the step will still fail and there won't be an error annotation which is what the action chose to do by not outputting a message. This will also encourage actions to output a useful message. I haven't seen that case (no message) but we've typically seen a bunch of useful unactionable error messages like these.

run: steps also print "##[error]Process completed with exit code 1.", should we consider removing that too?

No, in that case the user ran something and we're outputting the result of what they ran.

[dakale]

Thought about it more, and I agree now. Small PR here #290