Feature request: group logs when running just in GitHub actions

[GauBen]

Hey!

GitHub supports slightly interactive action output logs: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosing-what-your-workflow-does/workflow-commands-for-github-actions#grouping-log-lines

It would be cool if just output had these markers when running in GitHub actions, it can be guessed by reading the env var GITHUB_ACTIONS, which is expected to be true (doc)

Would it be a useful addition to just?

I'd love to contribute this feature but I'm not very familiar with rust, I would need a few hints

[casey]

Very cool idea!

I think we should add it first behind a flag, and then later think about turning it on automatically if GITHUB_ACTIONS, depending on whether grouped logs are always useful, or if they have drawbacks or are too noisy.

Log groups have a start and an end, so I guess we would print out:

::group::RECIPE_NAME

Before running a recipe, and:

::endgroup::

When the recipe was finished.

One thing I'm curious about is what happens if you start a group within another group, which might happen if you recursively invoke just:

foo:
  just bar

You'd get something like:

::group::foo
::group::bar
::endgroup::
::endgroup::

Which I'm not sure would display correctly.

Here's how I would start with this feature:

• Open a draft PR which prints out the group markers unconditionally, without worrying about a flag. You can do this in Recipe::run. I think you'll only need to add eprintln!("::group::{}", self.name) and eprintln!("::endgroup::").
• We'll also need to see how it looks, so in the same PR, add a new step to .github/workflows/ci.yaml which invokes just on some recipes in order to see what they look like. You can add some dummy recipes to the justfile.
• Then we can see what it actually looks like, what happens if you invoke just recursively, etc.
• Assuming it looks good, I can then help you with adding a flag. (Which shiouldn't be too hard, it's in config.rs.)

[GauBen]

I was thinking about more granular groups: each recipe line would get its group. Let's try something! Thanks for your quick reply

[casey]

Sounds good. We should do whatever is most usable. I don't really know what grouped logs look like, so if giving each recipe line its own group looks good, then that's fine. I suppose it might depend on the commands being run. If a single command generates a bunch of output, then putting it into a group is probably best. However, if there are a bunch of commands run which don't produce much output, then adding each one to a group might not be totally usable. We should probably experiment with both cases to see what works.

[GauBen]

Starting #2482 here!