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@trivikr Thanks so much for opening an issue! I'll triage this for the team to take a look 👀

Thanks @cmwilson21

It would be awesome if the bug in github.ref itself is fixed.
If that happens, the documentation is not required to be updated.

As per the documentation, the github.ref for pull_request should contain PR merge branch refs/pull/:prNumber/merge, but my tests shows main for closed activity.

@trivikr Thanks for this additional info ✨

Just a heads up, several members of our team are out for the holidays. Someone will have eyes on this soon, until then, we appreciate your patience 💖

Sure. I'm not blocked, as I used github.event.pull_request.number to compute branch name. There is a workaround.
This issue is created to either fix the issue in backend (recommended), or update the docs.

Hey @trivikr, thank you for opening this! I've reached out to a subject matter expert about this, and will keep you updated with what our next steps will be. 🚀

Thanks for opening an issue! We've triaged this issue for technical review by a subject matter expert 👀

Hey @trivikr 👋

After talking with a subject matter expert, we've determined the best way to resolve this would be to update the example code in the doc you linked to use github.head_ref instead of github.ref. This will give you the source branch instead of the merge branch, which is where you'd want to delete the caches from when you are using this workflow.

So if we change:

REPO=${{ github.repository }}
BRANCH=${{ github.ref }}

to

REPO=${{ github.repository }}
BRANCH=${{ github.head_ref }}

the workflow should do what you want it to do. You can find the supporting documentation for the github context here: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/contexts#github-context

Thank you for sharing this issue with us, and you or anyone else is welcome to open a PR to apply these changes! 🚀

we've determined the best way to resolve this would be to update the example code in the doc you linked to use github.head_ref instead of github.ref

Using BRANCH=${{ github.head_ref }} does not work for my use case, as the value is source branch use-head-ref-branch-cache-cleanup and not merge branch refs/pull/362/merge.

Details in Pull Request: awslabs/aws-sdk-js-codemod#362 (comment)

This will give you the source branch instead of the merge branch, which is where you'd want to delete the caches from when you are using this workflow.

I don't think works as caches are tied to merge branch as per documentation.
https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/caching-dependencies-to-speed-up-workflows#restrictions-for-accessing-a-cache

Hey @trivikr, I sent your question to our subject matter expert, and they are taking a look to get a better understanding of this. I do see what you are saying about how caches created on pull requests are linked to the merge ref instead of the source branch. I will update you when I have more information!

Hey @trivikr, I heard back from our subject matter expert and your proposed solution to update:

BRANCH=${{ github.ref }} to BRANCH="refs/pull/${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}/merge"

in the example is a great one. You or anyone else is welcome to pick up this issue and implement that change. 💛 Thank you again for finding this error and working through it with us!

Thanks! I've posted a PR to update cache cleanup example at #23612

Issue reported once more in:

• 'cleanup caches' example workflow is wrong and harmful! #23600

Thanks for working out the fix!