Get the current pushed tag in Github Actions

As far as I know there is no tag variable. However, it can be extracted from GITHUB_REF which contains the checked out ref, e.g. refs/tags/v1.2.3

Try this workflow. It creates a new environment variable with the extracted version that you can use in later steps.

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - 'v*.*.*'
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set env
        run: echo "RELEASE_VERSION=${GITHUB_REF#refs/*/}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
      - name: Test
        run: |
          echo $RELEASE_VERSION
          echo ${{ env.RELEASE_VERSION }}

Alternatively, use set-output:

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - 'v*.*.*'
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set output
        id: vars
        run: echo ::set-output name=tag::${GITHUB_REF#refs/*/}
      - name: Check output
        env:
          RELEASE_VERSION: ${{ steps.vars.outputs.tag }}
        run: |
          echo $RELEASE_VERSION
          echo ${{ steps.vars.outputs.tag }}

GitHub Contexts provides github.ref_name. You can use it like this: ${{github.ref_name}}.

Here is an example of this use in the artifact file name, which may be similar to the file path use that you asked about:

- name: Create tag artifact
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
  with:
    name: ${{github.ref_name}}
    path: Release

What worked for me:

run: echo "GIT_TAG=`echo $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)`" >> $GITHUB_ENV

So thanks to all the help from @peterevans I managed to achieve the result I wanted which was:

• to tag a commit
• push the tag to trigger the github action
• github action sets the git tag as an env var
• run install & build
• use chrislennon/action-aws-cli action to install aws cli using secrets for keys
• run command to sync the build to a new S3 bucket using the tag env var as the dir name

Here is an example of the what I ran using Chris Lennon's action:

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - 'v*.*.*'
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - name: Set env
        run: echo ::set-env name=RELEASE_VERSION::$(echo ${GITHUB_REF:10})
      - name: yarn install & build
        run: |
          yarn install
          yarn build
      - uses: chrislennon/action-aws-cli@v1.1
      - name: Publish to AWS S3
        env:
          AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          AWS_S3_BUCKET: ${{ secrets.AWS_S3_BUCKET }}
        run: aws s3 sync dist s3://$AWS_S3_BUCKET/$RELEASE_VERSION/ --acl public-read

Here's a workflow run showing that the GITHUB_REF environment variable contains refs/tags/v0.0.2:

I ran that by creating the tag, then doing git push origin v0.0.2.

Here's a snippet of the workflow you see in that log:

steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v1
- name: Dump GitHub context
  env:
    GITHUB_CONTEXT: ${{ toJson(github) }}
  run: echo "$GITHUB_CONTEXT"
  if: runner.os != 'Windows'
- name: Show GitHub ref
  run: echo "$GITHUB_REF"
  if: runner.os != 'Windows'
- name: Dump event JSON
  env:
    EVENT_JSON_FILENAME: ${{ github.event_path }}
  run: cat "$EVENT_JSON_FILENAME"
  if: runner.os != 'Windows'

Since the log has been deleted, here's a screenshot for evidence:

You can use shell expansion:

echo "${GITHUB_REF##*/}"

Here is the 2022 answer. No need to do weird parsing

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - '*'
jobs:
  github-example-tags:
    steps:
     - name: GitHub Tag Name example
       run: |
         echo "Tag name from GITHUB_REF_NAME: $GITHUB_REF_NAME"
         echo "Tag name from github.ref_name: ${{  github.ref_name }}"

See

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/contexts#github-context

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/environment-variables#default-environment-variables