Artifacts and Cache

Configuration

To use artifact-related actions like actions/upload-artifact, you need to configure an artifact server path.

Configuration Options

The following options can be configured to set up local artifact and cache servers:

Option	Description
--artifact-server-addr	Defines the address to which the artifact server binds
--artifact-server-path	Defines the path where the artifact server stores uploads and retrieves downloads from. If not specified, the artifact server will not start
--artifact-server-port	Defines the port where the artifact server listens
--cache-server-addr	Defines the address to which the cache server binds
--cache-server-path	Defines the path where the cache server stores caches
--cache-server-port	Defines the port where the cache server listens. 0 means a randomly available port

Setting up artifact and cache servers

1. Navigate to the Settings view
2. Click the + button on the Options heading to add a new option
3. Add the desired configuration options from the table above
4. For each option, set an appropriate value
5. Select the options to include them in your next run

Why is this needed?

GitHub Actions provides environment variables (ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN, ACTIONS_RUNTIME_URL, ACTIONS_CACHE_URL) that artifact actions rely on. When running locally, these are not available by default. The --artifact-server-path option configures a local artifact server to handle these operations.

Without the artifact server configuration, this workflow will fail with an error in the logs similar to:

❗ ::error::Unable to get the ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN env variable

Additional Resources

For more detailed information about configuring artifacts in act, refer to the act documentation on action artifacts.