Why isn't there an official GitHub Action for the Pact Verifier?

[valerio-iachini]

Hi,
I noticed that there's no official GitHub Action for running the pact_verifier_cli. Is there a specific reason for this? Are there any plans to provide one in the future?

Thanks!

[YOU54F]

👋🏾 Hey hey

We only provide actions for a subset of pact_broker-client commands, and a bundle with the pact-ruby-standalone tools

https://github.com/pactflow/actions?tab=readme-ov-file#actions

I've suggested a proposal to include the rust tooling (pact_verifier_cli / pact_mock_server_cli, pact-stub-server ) in the pact-ruby-standalone bundle here

You can get the newer tooling via the release binaries

https://docs.pact.io/implementation_guides/overview#cli-tooling

or via docker

https://docs.pact.io/implementation_guides/overview#docker

We don't currently provide support via actions for the mock-service / verifier written in ruby, albeit indirectly via the pact-ruby-standalone tools.

Would you want to run the verifier via an action? What is stopping you from utilising the verifier in your applications native language? it will be more likely be more featureful (client library dependant)

I would like them to be included, and we can create actions for the existing binaries, just trying to understand your use case and if it is better served in another way :)

[valerio-iachini]

Hi @YOU54F ,
Thanks for the quick response!

We created custom actions for the Pact CLI previously, but we replaced them with the official ones to avoid maintaining these actions ourselves. The only action we couldn't find was the verifier.

Since we have multiple projects in different languages, having an external utility like the verifier allows us to standardize the verification process across projects. Also, as far as I know, it's the suggested approach for languages that don't have official support, like Elixir.

[YOU54F]

I'm more than happy if you want to propose some standalone actions for each available CLI.

I had a go with some azure templates a few weeks ago, off the back of this request and another to create the azure templates

• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_stub_server_cli.md
• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_stub_server_cli.yml
• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_verifier_cli.md
• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_verifier_cli.yml
• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_plugin_cli.md
• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_plugin_cli.yml
• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_mock_server_cli.md
• https://github.com/YOU54F/azure-pipelines-templates/blob/main/templates/azure_pact_mock_server_cli.yml

I haven't mapped the inputs across, just appended to the users path, so they can access the CLI args as they please

Would this suffice, or would you rather see each CLI's arguments mapped?

If so, we just need consideration for arguments that are grouped, and can be duplicated. A similar request was asked for in #21 (comment)