CLEAR_EXCLUDE or PRESERVE or ?? to keep manually added folders to gh-pages.

[manzt]

Following up on the discussion here: #202

Is there a way to specify that this action should preserve a folder from the previous gh-pages history?

I want to use this action to track changes in master, keeping my site manzt.github.io/vizarr up to date with the latest changes. But, I also want to preserve versioned builds of my site in a nested path (e.g. manzt.github.io/vizarr/v0.1), so that there are stable links that can be shared indefinitely. I've manually added the folder v0.1 to my gh-pages branch, but when this action runs v0.1 is eliminated.

Is there a way to declare folder(s)/file(s) that should remain on gh-pages after this action runs? Essentially I want to:

1.) Build my static site and copy the contents of build to root of gh-pages branch.
2.) Keep any folders from previous history on gh-pages branch that I've white-listed.

Many thanks in advance.

[Pike]

I think what happens is that the deploy on https://github.com/manzt/vizarr/commits/gh-pages that removes the versioned doc isn't for the main revision that has the exclusion. The run that has that ends up not changing the gh-pages branch, and thus doesn't push.

Can you back out manzt/vizarr@deeceba and try again?

You shouldn't need PRESERVE at all I think. Also, likely gonna remove that towards 4.0

[manzt]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not sure that I understand. I manually added v0.1/ in manzt/vizarr@deeceba to the gh-pages branch, and then I configured this action to commit to gh-pages on merge master. I want the v0.1/ folder to remain unchanged on the gh-pages branch, but to have a new build replace the root everytime I merge master.

Can you back out manzt/vizarr@deeceba and try again?

What is meant by "back out" here? Thanks for the help!

[Pike]

So, the deploy that removed v0.1 is from manzt/vizarr@3e0871d (you can tell from the commit message). You added the CLEAN_EXCLUDE in manzt/vizarr@4b95659, which is the next commit. That ran the publishing action, but there were no local changes, so it didn't update anything.

The removal run was probably https://github.com/manzt/vizarr/runs/1488410747, which had CLEAN, but not CLEAN_EXCLUDE. Not exactly sure where that's coming from, tbh.

You'll need to add v0.1 again, either by doing the same steps you did the first time, or via https://git-scm.com/docs/git-restore.

[manzt]

Thanks for walking me through that! Seems to be working now. I really appreciate it.