Troubleshooting: GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions

Why do workflows on some runners return HTTP status code 0, are failing builds, or are opening issues?

lychee or markdown-link-check will run an automated scan of the destination of almost every link (there is an exclude list) for every Markdown file in the repo and in the generated HTML that runs the website. Infrequently, GitHub's websites and external websites as well will rate-limit the runner's attempt open the link target or there is an internal failure on the runner. The resulting HTTP status is 0 (and that is not a normal one in the 200, 400, or 500 range). The build failure will indicate the link or an issue will be automatically opened that looks like the report below.

FILE: build/ci-cd/README.md

[✖] https://nodejs.org/en/

[✓] https://github.com/jessedc/ajv-cli

2 links checked.

If you can open the full URL reliably in your web browser on a developer workstation, you can safely presume this is a the infrequent hiccup on a GitHub Actions runner and close the issue as a false positive.