Trying to setup retype on Github Pages and failing

[Ravencentric]

https://github.com/Ravencentric/retype-test
https://ravencentric.github.io/retype-test/

I did follow https://retype.com/guides/github-actions/ but I can't seem to get it working

[geoffreymcgill]

It looks like you are committing files directly to the retype branch and that is conflicting with Retype and the GitHub Action.

Try the following steps:

1. Double check that you have the GitHub Pages configured correctly. I cannot see that page in your repo, but from what I can tell, you have GitHub Pages configured correctly, but it would be good to just double check.
   
2. Delete your retype branch. On your branches page, you should see the retype branch and a 🗑️ icon on the far right of that line to delete the branch. The retype branch will be recreated when you make another change to your main branch.
3. Commit something to your main branch, such as making a change to the README.md file. Only commit the change to the main branch, not the retype branch.

Everything else look good.

Hope this helps.

[Ravencentric]

if i delete the retype branch then the github pages automatically turns off since the branch it was being built from was deleted. Even pushing anything to main doesnt seem to recreate retype branch

[geoffreymcgill]

It looks like GitHub has changed the default for Workflow permission when new repos are created. In order for Retype to create the retype branch and write the generated files into that branch, Retype needs to have write permissions. Previously, that was granted by default, but it appears GitHub has recently changed to read only permissions by default.

The fix/work-around is simple by enabling the following setting:

Settings > Actions / General > Scroll to Workflow permissions

We're doing some research into any other options we might have as an Action publisher, but it would appear our options are limited and any freshly created repos using Retype would need to enable Read and write permissions for the repo.

[geoffreymcgill]

We found that content write permissions can be granted on a per-Action basis, so you do not need to enable for the entire repo.

Add the following permissions > contents config within the jobs > publish section of your .github/workflows/retype-action.yml file

    permissions:
      contents: write

Here is a new default retype-action.yml file.

name: Publish Retype powered website to GitHub Pages
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  publish:
    name: Publish to retype branch

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    permissions:
      contents: write

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - uses: retypeapp/action-build@latest

      - uses: retypeapp/action-github-pages@latest
        with:
          update-branch: true

We have also updated the GitHub Action documentation on the retype.com website, see https://retype.com/guides/github-actions/#step-1-add-retype-actionyml-workflow

If you are using a retype-action.yml with a Retype license key and the RETYPE_SECRET, the default workflow configuration would now be the following:

name: Publish Retype powered website to GitHub Pages
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  publish:
    name: Publish to retype branch

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    permissions:
      contents: write

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - uses: retypeapp/action-build@latest
        with:
          license: ${{ secrets.RETYPE_SECRET }}

      - uses: retypeapp/action-github-pages@latest
        with:
          update-branch: true

[geoffreymcgill]

It appears this default permission change was implemented by GitHub on February 2.

https://github.blog/changelog/2023-02-02-github-actions-updating-the-default-github_token-permissions-to-read-only/

GitHub documentation on how to change the default permissions on a repo:
https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/enabling-features-for-your-repository/managing-github-actions-settings-for-a-repository#configuring-the-default-github_token-permissions

Granting write permissions on the entire repo using this repo level setting is not required. As mentioned in my last response, you can grant write permission on an individual workflow job by adding the following config:

    permissions:
      contents: write

Hope this helps.

[Ravencentric]

This helped. Thank you so much for guiding me!

[DannyBen]

Perhaps this could also be an opportunity to switch to the new GitHub Pages build using actions, instead of the old Jekyll-based build.

An example of a workflow I implemented can be found here.