Bashful Comment

Version updated for https://github.com/3MUl0R/bashful-comment to version v1.

  • This action is used across all versions by ? repositories.

Action Type

This is a Composite action.

Go to the GitHub Marketplace to find the latest changes.

Action Summary

The Bashful Comment GitHub Action automates the creation, updating, and management of pull request comments using lightweight, pre-installed tools like bash, jq, perl, and gh. It eliminates the need for Node.js dependencies, ensuring seamless operation without build steps or versioning concerns. Key features include adding conditional messages based on workflow status, updating existing comments without duplication, and reading comment content from files or performing find-and-replace operations, making it a flexible and efficient solution for managing PR comments in CI/CD workflows.

Release notes

v1.0.0

Bashful Comment is a zero-dependency GitHub Action for adding, updating, and managing pull request comments. It runs as a composite action using only bash, jq, perl, and gh. All of which pre-installed on GitHub-hosted runners.

There are no node_modules, no build step, and nothing to break when GitHub deprecates a Node.js runtime.

Why this exists

GitHub Actions that post PR comments are commonly implemented in Node.js. As GitHub advances its supported Node.js versions (16 -> 20 -> 24), every action that targets an older runtime generates deprecation warnings and eventually stops working. This action sidesteps that cycle entirely by having no runtime dependency beyond the shell tools already present on every runner.

Features

  • Zero Node.js dependency - composite action, pure shell; no node_modules, no npm audit noise, no runtime version pinning
  • Deduplication via message-id - a hidden HTML marker ties comments to a workflow step; subsequent runs update the existing comment instead of creating new ones
  • Status-aware messages - provide distinct message-success, message-failure, message-cancelled, and message-skipped bodies; the correct one is selected automatically from job.status
  • Find and replace - apply one or more regex patterns against an existing comment body using Perl-compatible regex with inline modifier support (/pattern/gi, /m, /s)
  • message-path with glob support - read comment content from one or more files; supports glob patterns and concatenates multiple matches
  • Preformatted code blocks - wrap any message in a fenced code block via preformatted: true
  • Refresh position - delete and recreate a comment so it surfaces at the bottom of the thread
  • update-only mode - silently skip posting if no existing comment is found
  • GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) - set github-host and github-enterprise-token to target a GHES instance
  • Outputs - comment-created, comment-updated, and comment-id for use in downstream steps
  • Self-testing CI - the repository’s own CI workflow dogfoods all nine features on every pull request

Marker compatibility with mshick/add-pr-comment

This action uses the same <!-- add-pr-comment:... --> hidden markers that mshick/add-pr-comment embeds in comments. If your repository already has sticky comments posted by that action, Bashful Comment will find them by their existing markers and update them in place - no comment duplication, no migration of historical comments required.

Migration from mshick/add-pr-comment

Change the uses line. Everything else stays the same.

Before:

- uses: mshick/add-pr-comment@v2
  with:
    message-id: deploy-status
    message: "Deployed: ${{ env.VERSION }}"

After:

- uses: 3MUl0R/bashful-comment@v1
  with:
    message-id: deploy-status
    message: "Deployed: ${{ env.VERSION }}"

All inputs are supported with identical names and semantics. The one capability not carried over is proxy-url - see the README for details.

Runtime requirements

All required tools are pre-installed on GitHub-hosted runners