Several behavioral differences exist between Artifact actions v3 and below vs v4. This document outlines common scenarios in v3, and how they would be handled in v4.
In v3, Artifacts are mutable so it's possible to write workflow scenarios where multiple jobs upload to the same Artifact like so:
jobs:
upload:
strategy:
matrix:
runs-on: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest, windows-latest]
runs-on: ${{ matrix.runs-on }}
steps:
- name: Create a File
run: echo "hello from ${{ matrix.runs-on }}" > file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
with:
name: my-artifact # NOTE: same artifact name
path: file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txt
download:
needs: upload
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Download All Artifacts
uses: actions/download-artifact@v3
with:
name: my-artifact
path: my-artifact
- run: ls -R my-artifactThis results in a directory like so:
my-artifact/
file-macos-latest.txt
file-ubuntu-latest.txt
file-windows-latest.txt
In v4, Artifacts are immutable (unless deleted). So you must change each of the uploaded Artifacts to have a different name and filter the downloads by name to achieve the same effect:
jobs:
upload:
strategy:
matrix:
runs-on: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest, windows-latest]
runs-on: ${{ matrix.runs-on }}
steps:
- name: Create a File
run: echo "hello from ${{ matrix.runs-on }}" > file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
+ uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
with:
- name: my-artifact
+ name: my-artifact-${{ matrix.runs-on }}
path: file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txt
download:
needs: upload
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Download All Artifacts
- uses: actions/download-artifact@v3
+ uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
with:
- name: my-artifact
path: my-artifact
+ pattern: my-artifact-*
+ merge-multiple: true
- run: ls -R my-artifactIn v4, the new pattern: input will filter the downloaded Artifacts to match the name specified. The new merge-multiple: input will support downloading multiple Artifacts to the same directory. If the files within the Artifacts have the same name, the last writer wins.
In v3, the contents of an Artifact were mutable so something like the following was possible:
jobs:
upload:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Create a file
run: echo "hello world" > my-file.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
with:
name: my-artifact # NOTE: same artifact name
path: my-file.txt
upload-again:
needs: upload
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Create a different file
run: echo "goodbye world" > my-file.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
with:
name: my-artifact # NOTE: same artifact name
path: my-file.txtThe resulting my-file.txt in my-artifact will have "goodbye world" as the content.
In v4, Artifacts are immutable unless deleted. To achieve this same behavior, you can use overwrite: true to delete the Artifact before a new one is created:
jobs:
upload:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Create a file
run: echo "hello world" > my-file.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
+ uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
with:
name: my-artifact # NOTE: same artifact name
path: my-file.txt
upload-again:
needs: upload
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Create a different file
run: echo "goodbye world" > my-file.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
+ uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
with:
name: my-artifact # NOTE: same artifact name
path: my-file.txt
+ overwrite: trueNote that this will create an entirely new Artifact, with a different ID from the previous.
In v3, multiple uploads from multiple jobs could be done to the same Artifact. This would result in a single archive, which could be useful for sending to upstream systems outside of Actions via API or UI downloads.
jobs:
upload:
strategy:
matrix:
runs-on: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest, windows-latest]
runs-on: ${{ matrix.runs-on }}
steps:
- name: Create a File
run: echo "hello from ${{ matrix.runs-on }}" > file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
with:
name: all-my-files # NOTE: same artifact name
path: file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txtThe single all-my-files artifact would contain the following:
.
∟ file-ubuntu-latest.txt
∟ file-macos-latest.txt
∟ file-windows-latest.txt
To achieve the same in v4 you can change it like so:
jobs:
upload:
strategy:
matrix:
runs-on: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest, windows-latest]
runs-on: ${{ matrix.runs-on }}
steps:
- name: Create a File
run: echo "hello from ${{ matrix.runs-on }}" > file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txt
- name: Upload Artifact
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
+ uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
with:
- name: all-my-files
+ name: my-artifact-${{ matrix.runs-on }}
path: file-${{ matrix.runs-on }}.txt
+ merge:
+ runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+ needs: upload
+ steps:
+ - name: Merge Artifacts
+ uses: actions/upload-artifact/merge@v4
+ with:
+ name: all-my-files
+ pattern: my-artifact-*Note that this will download all artifacts to a temporary directory and reupload them as a single artifact. For more information on inputs and other use cases for actions/upload-artifact/merge@v4, see the action documentation.