Get target branch ref in Github Actions for PR that is [not] from a fork

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I'm trying to test a PR handling action on Github.

For that I'm creating a PR in my own repo and trying to use ${{ github.base_ref }}, but it is empty. This help page says that GITHUB_BASE_REF is only available for PRs from forks.

Is there a way to get the target branch for a PR event, regardless of whether it is from a forked PR or not? Or a way to address the latter case specifically.

P.S. What I'm really trying to do is to get a list of changed files in the PR. What I have works for pushes but not for PRs:

git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r ${{ github.event.before }} ${{ github.sha }}
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1 Answers

This should work regardless of whether it's raised from a fork or not.

${{ github.event.pull_request.base.ref }}

By the way, you can add a step in your workflow to dump the github context object to see all available properties.

      - name: Dump GitHub context
        env:
          GITHUB_CONTEXT: ${{ toJson(github) }}
        run: echo "$GITHUB_CONTEXT"
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