Any way to fetch all changed files in a PR's lifetime?

[danielap-ma]

Scenario:

Say I have a PR with the following commit history:

Commit #1:
Introduce a change to file a.txt

Commit #2:
Introduce a change to file b.txt

Commit #3:
Revert the change to file b.txt

Commit #4:
Another change (not revert) to file a.txt

The output of all_changed_files will be a.txt, which makes sense, since that's the only current diff from the target branch. But is there a way to detect b.txt had changes along the way too? I know it's possible to compare two specific commit hashes, but that's not really a viable solution.

Thanks in advance!

[jackton1]

Hi @danielap-ma, yes that is supported by default for a pull request event.

For more information about the implementation details. See https://github.com/tj-actions/changed-files?tab=readme-ov-file#using-local-git-directory-

[danielap-ma]

Hi @jackton1, I must be missing it then since I don't see a flag which accomplishes this.
Can you elaborate please?

Thanks!

[jackton1]

Hi @danielap-ma, I recommend creating a workflow file with the following content. After that, you can create a new pull request that triggers the workflow.

name: CI

on:
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  changed_files:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Test changed-files
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Get changed files
        id: changed-files
        uses: tj-actions/changed-files@823fcebdb31bb35fdf2229d9f769b400309430d0 # v46

      - name: List all changed files
        env:
          ALL_CHANGED_FILES: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.all_changed_files }}
        run: |
          for file in ${ALL_CHANGED_FILES}; do
            echo "$file was changed"
          done

Each push to the pull request branch, for example, changing a.txt would echo "a.txt was changed" and any subsequent push to the pull request branch would now include all files that have changed, for example, "a.txt was changed" as well as "b.txt was changed" and so on.

[danielap-ma]

Hi @jackton1, I'll explain my use case, hopefully that'll clarify things.

I have a workflow which triggers on a pull_request_closed event - Meaning it runs only once for each PR.
When that workflow runs, I'd like to be able to fetch all files that were changed in the course of the PR, including reverts and files that no longer differ from the target branch. Is that achievable?

Thanks very much.