Should this action fail is nothing is done?

[wilfwilson]

If this action finds no autogen.sh, or configure, or make file, etc, should it fail?

I think this could be potentially helpful.

A CI workflow for a package that does not require compilation does not need to call this Action.

On the other hand, I have encountered situations before where I have not quite set up the CI correctly, which has meant that this Action cannot find the relevant autogen.sh etc file, which meant that the package has not been compiled. Nevertheless, this Action still passed according to the CI (and it was only on studying the log that I could see what was going on).

For me, this is similar to gap-actions/run-pkg-tests#8

[stertooy]

I think this could be problematic if we also build dependencies. The package itself might not need to be built, but its dependencies could require this.

Of course, we could change this to "throw an error if neither the package itself nor any of its dependencies needed to be built". But if running this action for package X with dependency Y, and a new version of package Y adds or removes the need for compilation, then things get complicated...

I think throwing a warning would be fine, though? But those might go by unnoticed...

[wilfwilson]

Yeah, I get you. Otherwise, there could be an optional input that's named something a bit more useful error-if-nothing-done, that defaults to false.