v6 clean: false still deletes my files that were checkedout from other directory.

[Mr-Saikiran]

      - name: Checkout Support files
        uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
            repository: '${{ github.repository_owner }}/thatorg'
            token: ${{ steps.app-token.outputs.token }}
            ref: 'v1'
            sparse-checkout: |
              docker-ui/Dockerfile
              nginx/nginx.conf

      - name: setup nginx.conf
        run: |
          sed -i "s|UI_NAME|${{ github.event.repository.name }}|g" nginx/nginx.conf
          mv nginx/nginx.conf ./nginx.conf

      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        name: Checkout Source Code
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          ref: ${{ github.ref_name }}
          clean: false 

And from the GITHUB Action Step Output I see its deleting the workspace files which were previous pulled into the runner

Run actions/checkout@v6
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0
    ref: main
    clean: false
    repository: thisorg/thisrepo
    token: ***
    ssh-strict: true
    ssh-user: git
    persist-credentials: true
    sparse-checkout-cone-mode: true
    fetch-tags: false
    show-progress: true
    lfs: false
    submodules: false
    set-safe-directory: true
Syncing repository: thisorg/thisrepo
Getting Git version info
  Working directory is '/home/runner/work/thisrepo/thisrepo'
  /usr/bin/git version
  git version 2.52.0
Temporarily overriding HOME='/home/runner/work/_temp/4392b1eb-81d2-4a6a-b469-6ef11459c8c8' before making global git config changes
Adding repository directory to the temporary git global config as a safe directory
/usr/bin/git config --global --add safe.directory /home/runner/work/thisrepo/thisrepo
/usr/bin/git config --local --get remote.origin.url
https://github.com/thisorg/thatrepo
Deleting the contents of '/home/runner/work/thisrepo/thisrepo'
Initializing the repository
Disabling automatic garbage collection
Setting up auth
Fetching the repository
Determining the checkout info
/usr/bin/git sparse-checkout disable
/usr/bin/git config --local --unset-all extensions.worktreeConfig
Checking out the ref
/usr/bin/git log -1 --format=%H
1074b85d5c5e3a06b9d4db67902254f4cd08b697

Any workaround is appreciated until this is fixed.

[jsoref]

The workaround is to use path and check things out into distinct directories see Checkout multiple repos (side by side).

The documentation here is indeed not great.

specifically, clean has not done anything close to what clean claims

checkout/action.yml

Lines 57 to 58 in 8e8c483

	clean:
	description: 'Whether to execute `git clean -ffdx && git reset --hard HEAD` before fetching'

since v2-beta: a572f64

checkout/src/git-source-provider.ts

Lines 179 to 190 in a572f64

	let remove = false
	// Check whether using git or REST API
	if (!git) {
	remove = true
	}
	// Fetch URL does not match
	else if (
	!fsHelper.directoryExistsSync(path.join(repositoryPath, '.git')) ||
	repositoryUrl !== (await git.tryGetFetchUrl())
	) {
	remove = true

checkout/src/git-source-provider.ts

Lines 241 to 244 in a572f64

	core.warning(
	`Unable to prepare the existing repository. The repository will be recreated instead.`
	)
	remove = true

checkout/src/git-source-provider.ts

Lines 248 to 253 in a572f64

	if (remove) {
	// Delete the contents of the directory. Don't delete the directory itself
	// since it might be the current working directory.
	core.info(`Deleting the contents of '${repositoryPath}'`)
	for (const file of await fs.promises.readdir(repositoryPath)) {
	await io.rmRF(path.join(repositoryPath, file))

Note that conceptually git doesn't generally want to do what you're trying to do. It wants to manage a directory (and its subdirectories) with a single repository. If you check out files from that repository and then ask to check out files from a different commit in the same repository, then it really would generally want to delete the old files from the old commit.

[Mr-Saikiran]

Thank you this would help.

[greg-openai]

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