GitHub Actions artifacts are hard to reuse and clean up
CI developers report trouble sharing artifacts between dependent jobs, retrieving them from other workflow runs, and scripting downloads when URLs require authentication. Some also want artifacts deleted immediately after a run and resort to workflow-triggered cleanup. These reports point to friction across artifact access and lifecycle, though the evidence is from 2020–2023 and may not reflect current GitHub Actions behavior.
For gitHub Actions CI developers. Mentioned from Jun 2020 to Jan 2023 on GitHub.
4 different people described this problem in 4 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 4.0/10
- Pain
- 6.0/10
- Frequency
- 5.8/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 5.0/10
- Who pays
- Professionals
- Competition
- High
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
Sadly, the artifact only become available after the whole workflow finished. So, my second job never downloads any artifacts
Per the report in https://github.com/actions/download-artifact/issues/3, a common use case amongst GitHub Actions users is to download an artifact from a previous run (or from another workflow altogether)
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 3 places to find your first customers
- 2 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks