Reusable workflows UI - structured dependency view

[vaind]

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Moving a set of jobs, with dependencies between them, to a reusable workflow makes the UI for that given workflow just list the inner jobs as a flat list. This makes it very hard to see what's actually being run, see the dependencies and resolve issues.

See the following example of the same job, before and after moving part of the jobs to the reusable workflow:

[sgtsquiggs]

+1 - this was the discussion I was about to start:

Reusable workflows when called do not display dependencies between jobs.

In this example, my Changes job generates variables to use in the dependent matrix. In the matrix, I call another workflow which has several jobs with dependencies. Those dependencies are not displayed in any way that is easy to grok.

Ideally the matrix should show the nested workflows with dependencies, like normal workflows have.

[cfoch]

I have the following structure:

scheduler workflow (*) -> matrix generator workflow -> reusable workflow (14 instances)

(*) passes some inputs to the matrix generator workflow to filter the matrix, depending on if it is a PR or Push or wahtever.

Everything is flatten, so very hard to distinguish.

[fatmcgav]

Just to echo the above, reusable multi-job workflows in combination with the matrix strategy is very powerful, but the UI experience is extremely lacking...

[pauliusg]

The same for me, very hard to understand what is going on when you use matrix and reusable workflow:

[Wineryeath]

bro suchas

.github/workflows/reusable-workflow.yml

name: Reusable Workflow with Explicit Dependencies

on:
workflow_call:

jobs:
setup:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
outputs:
setup-complete: ${{ steps.set-output.outputs.result }}
steps:
- name: Perform setup
id: set-output
run: echo "result=true" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

  - name: Log dependencies
    run: |
      echo "This is the SETUP job - no dependencies"
      echo "::notice::Downstream jobs will depend on this"

build:
needs: setup
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Log dependencies
run: |
echo "This is the BUILD job - depends on SETUP"
echo "::warning::Dependency: needs: setup"

  - name: Build artifacts
    run: echo "Building..."

huh huh

[bhidalgo-apolitical]

This is a very bad user experience, specially for monorepo structures which makes it almost impossible to understand what's going on.

Ideally each called workflow should be displayed in the UI individually - or at least have a toggle option to be able to see what has been generated from it. @vaind example clearly shows how a good design for this would look like.

Does someone from product has had the opportunity to have a look at this?

[snps-midhunn]

A flat list is really bad if the job names have similar keys. The fact that skipped jobs don't generate the name and display the generic job id is too painful. Too difficult to navigate and ton a lot of complains from devs.

[bhidalgo-apolitical]

This would look way cleaner if the possibility to completely hide jobs was introduced too, instead of displaying it in the UI as skipped which simply clogs it with useless information.
GitLab does it very nicely, whenever a job does not comply with the if condition then it's skipped and hidden, so you only see what's actually running instead of displaying everything.

[moshbit-jenkins]

workflow-dispatch can be of help as it won't "flatten" inner workflows on the UI, but it's got its own troubles

[oliversaggau]

Any updates here?

[HugoSart]

Please someone fix this.