What would be the ideal setup for my multi-platform project?

[Andre601]

I have a project on Modrinth and looking at this action, I can see some good use in it.

However, the thing is that my project in question, namely AdvancedServerList, is offering 4 distinct jar files for 4 different platforms to use on.
Each platform's jar file is located in ./:platform/target/AdvancedServerList-:platform-:version.jar
:platform being the platform it was made for and :version being the version. So for example is a possible path ./bungeecord/target/AdvancedServerList-BungeeCord-1.5.1.jar

So... What would be an optimal Action setup to publish the jar files to Modrinth without any major problems?

I already have a GitHub Action to automatically add the Jar files to a new GitHub Release, so Jar files would be already available from that Action: https://github.com/Andre601/AdvancedServerList/blob/master/.github/workflows/release.yml

[Kir-Antipov]

You can view your uploads as different versions of your plugin (because technically they are different versions), therefore, taking into consideration the fact that mc-publish is able to publish one version to one platform at a time, since I do not want to turn it into a LHC control panel, you need 4 calls to mc-publish (or 5, if you want to publish files to GitHub in batch, as you're doing right now).

Considering all of the above, I would suggest you to replace your existing configuration with something like this:

name: Build Jars

on:
  release:
    types: [published]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3

    - name: Set up JDK 1.16
      uses: actions/setup-java@v3
      with:
        distribution: 'temurin'
        java-version: '16'

    - name: Build jar
      run: mvn clean install

    - name: Upload BungeeCord assets to GitHub and Modrinth
      uses: Kir-Antipov/[email protected]
      with:
        name: 1.15.1 - BungeeCord
        version: 1.15.1
        files-primary: bungeecord/target/AdvancedServerList-*.jar
        files-secondary: ""
        loaders: bungeecord
        game-versions: |
          1.19
          1.19.1
          1.19.2
        modrinth-token: ${{ secrets.MODRINTH_TOKEN }}
        github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

    - name: Upload Paper assets to GitHub and Modrinth
      uses: Kir-Antipov/[email protected]
      with:
        name: 1.15.1 - Paper
        version: 1.15.1
        files-primary: paper/target/AdvancedServerList-*.jar
        files-secondary: ""
        loaders: paper
        game-versions: |
          1.19
          1.19.1
          1.19.2
        modrinth-token: ${{ secrets.MODRINTH_TOKEN }}
        github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

    - name: Upload Spigot assets to GitHub and Modrinth
      uses: Kir-Antipov/[email protected]
      with:
        name: 1.15.1 - Spigot
        version: 1.15.1
        files-primary: spigot/target/AdvancedServerList-*.jar
        files-secondary: ""
        loaders: spigot
        game-versions: |
          1.19
          1.19.1
          1.19.2
        modrinth-token: ${{ secrets.MODRINTH_TOKEN }}
        github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

    - name: Upload Velocity assets to GitHub and Modrinth
      uses: Kir-Antipov/[email protected]
      with:
        name: 1.15.1 - Velocity
        version: 1.15.1
        files-primary: velocity/target/AdvancedServerList-*.jar
        files-secondary: ""
        loaders: velocity
        game-versions: |
          1.19
          1.19.1
          1.19.2
        modrinth-token: ${{ secrets.MODRINTH_TOKEN }}
        github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

In order to make the configuration a little bit more readable and compact you could use matrices:

name: Build Jars

on:
  release:
    types: [published]

jobs:
  build:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        include:
          - platform: bungeecord
            name: BungeeCord
          - platform: paper
            name: Paper
          - platform: spigot
            name: Spigot
          - platform: velocity
            name: Velocity
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3

    - name: Set up JDK 1.16
      uses: actions/setup-java@v3
      with:
        distribution: 'temurin'
        java-version: '16'

    - name: Build jar
      run: mvn clean install

    - name: Get GitHub Release version
      id: release-version
      run: |
        version=$(echo ${{ github.event.release.tag_name }} | cut -d'v' -f2)
        echo "::set-output name=version::$version"

    - name: Upload ${{ matrix.name }} assets to GitHub and Modrinth
      uses: Kir-Antipov/[email protected]
      with:
        name: ${{ steps.release-version.outputs.version }} - ${{ matrix.name }}
        version: ${{ steps.release-version.outputs.version }}
        files-primary: ${{ matrix.platform }}/target/AdvancedServerList-*.jar
        files-secondary: ""
        loaders: ${{ matrix.platform }}
        game-versions: |
          1.19
          1.19.1
          1.19.2
        modrinth-token: ${{ secrets.MODRINTH_TOKEN }}
        github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Hope this helps :)

[Andre601]

Thank you for the really detailed info!

I made a few minor changes to the action you showed (The one with the matrices) to fit some specific needs and I have a few minor questions I would appreciate to get answer for.

Where does the action retrieve the Modrinth Project ID from? The readme mentions "a value specified in the config file" as its default value, but that is quite vague... What config?
I set the value manually for the time being as I do not have a mod, but a plugin, which means there wouldn't be something like a mod configuration where this values is stored in.

I made some adjustments to the matrix setting.
Namely, did I add a directory option that I use for the option files-primary.
The reason is that - at least for BungeeCord - I define multiple loaders for one version, so I can't use the platforms option here if I want multiple loaders to be defined.
My question now is, if I have to define the loaders as comma-separated entries or do something similar to game-versions to define it?
The readme mentions it to be "a list", but Idk what that would mean in terms of GitHub Actions, as it is relatively lose with its definition of a list at times (i.e. a comman-separated string already counts as "list" for some actions).

I would like to include the changelog from the release, so if I understand it correctly would I set changelog: ${{ github.event.release.body }} right?

I for now made a PR, so that you can hopefully take a look and give some feedback.
Andre601/AdvancedServerList#13

[Kir-Antipov]

I have to set the modrinth ID since I don't have a mod file or similar containing it right? The Readme mentions a "value specified in the config file" but that is quite vague... What config?

Right, you need to provide it by yourself. Also, you can click on any input to get more information about it, e.g. #modrinth-id provides examples of acceptable "config" files. Since this action was made primarily for mod uploads, mc-publish understands Fabric metadata, Forge metadata, and Quilt metadata, at least at this moment in time. You do not fall in these categories, so, sadly, you cannot rely on most of the default value resolvers, but you still can use the action to upload your assets to GitHub, Modrinth, and Curseforge, you just need to specify the required stuff manually

I want to define multiple loaders for one version, do I just make them comma separated, or will I need to do something like what is done for game-versions?

It's better to separate values in array-like inputs with the new line symbol, because it is acceptable and understandable by all of them, but for loaders you technically could use any whitespace symbol as a separator, e.g., bungeecord waterfall, because loader names always consist of a single word

I would like to include the changelog from the release

This is one of the things you do not need to worry about just because you have a plugin and not a mod. changelog's default value is "body of the release that triggered the action"

[Andre601]

but you still can use the action to upload your assets to GitHub, Modrinth, and Curseforge, you just need to specify the required stuff manually

This made me have a question I forgot to ask. With the current setup using the Matrix, will all the different jars from the different iterations of the Matrix be included in the GitHub release? Because I do include them all in the GitHub release for that matter.

It's better to separate values in array-like inputs with the new line symbol, because it is acceptable and understandable by all of them, but for loaders you technically could use any whitespace symbol as a separator, e.g., bungeecord waterfall, because loader names always consist of a single word

So, [bungeecord, waterfall] or how should I understand array-like inputs?
As mentioned does GitHub Action have a bad history of accepting the weirdest inputs as "valid" list values or similar.

I was considering to use the | approach like for game-versions but when I added did, did it change the highlighting of the subsequent options making me assume it probably includes those too... It could just be some highlighting issue tho, but I'm not sure.

This is one of the things you do not need to worry about just because you have a plugin and not a mod. changelog's default value is "body of the release that triggered the action"

Good to know, thank you.

[Kir-Antipov]

This made me have a question I forgot to ask. With the current setup using the Matrix, will all the different jars from the different iterations of the Matrix be included in the GitHub release? Because I do include them all in the GitHub release for that matter.

Yup, github-token is specified, therefore files will be uploaded there too

As mentioned does GitHub Action have a bad history of accepting the weirdest inputs as "valid" list values or similar.

The problem with GitHub Actions is they do not allow users to specify complex objects as inputs. GitHub Action developers receive all the inputs as strings and it's absolutely terrible. I'd love it if it was possible for users to specify, for example, a valid yaml array and I could read it as an... array:

  loaders: [bungeecord, waterfall]

But this is just not possible. So, users need to give us strings, and we need to parse them and convert into arrays ¯\(ツ)/¯

[Andre601]

I've made a small release and it worked, so thanks for this setup.
Tho, when I saw it correctly does it call the same action (mvn clean install) for all matrix instances which means it builds 4x4 jars in total...
I don't mind that, tho I wonder if it would be better to change the setup slightly to something like:

run: |
  mvn clean # Even needed? Since it usually is a blank workspace
  mvn install --project :core,:${{ matrix.directory }}

so that I would only build the core + module I need for the respective matrix entry...

I also had a small typo in the action (github-toke instead of github-token). Good thing the action pointed it out. 😅

[Kir-Antipov]

Yep, go for it, at least it would save you a few minutes of GitHub Actions usage (by default users have only 2000 of those per month)