GitHub action failed at npm ci

Question

npm ci passes locally, but fails when running as part of GitHub action to build and deploy to Firebase hosting. Project is Angular 13.

The error is: npm ERR! The 'npm ci' command can only install with an existing package-lock.json

This is the yaml config file:

# This file was auto-generated by the Firebase CLI
# https://github.com/firebase/firebase-tools

name: Deploy to Firebase Hosting on merge
'on':
  push:
    branches:
      - main
jobs:
  build_and_deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - run: npm ci && npm run build
      - uses: FirebaseExtended/action-hosting-deploy@v0
        with:
          repoToken: '${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}'
          firebaseServiceAccount: '${{ secrets.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_MY_WEBSITE }}'
          channelId: live
          projectId: my-website

Answer 1

You could follow "Super fast npm install on Github Actions Super fast npm install on Github Actions" by De Voorhoede:

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Setup Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '14'

      - name: Cache dependencies
        uses: actions/cache@v2
        with:
          path: ~/.npm
          key: npm-${{ hashFiles('package-lock.json') }}
          restore-keys: npm-

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: cd my-site && npm ci --ignore-scripts
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^

      # run npm test, build, lint, etc.

That way, package-lock.json should be properly generated.

That should work if you are in the right folder, since the OP matchifang adds in the comments:

I found out I was in the wrong directory.