Init-pants can surprisingly change order of resolution due to HOME/.local/bin addition

[akomisarek]

Init-pants can lead to unexpected version of Python/scripts being taken from bin

Let me explain the setup I have encountered:

1. Not sure why but the image we were using had pip inside the /home/runner/.local/bin
2. We invoke setup-python before initialising pants. This adds new Python to the PATH. Everything works as expected
3. Now invoking init-pants performed the following:

   actions/init-pants/action.yaml

   Lines 110 to 112 in d767b35

   	else
   	echo "$HOME/.local/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH
   	fi

   
   This adds /home/runner/.local/bin again to the beginning of the list.

This lead to wrong pip resolution as the one from ./local/bin is used instead of the newly installed one.

Expected behaviour would be not to modify PATH if .local/bin is already on the path maybe?

I am also questioning our ./local/bin having Pip but it's different story!

Thoughts?

[benjyw]

Hmmm, one solution is to move pants out of ~/.local/bin to some pants-specfic subdirectory, and put that on the path.

[akomisarek]

Thanks again, Ben! :) I did the workaround that I am doing our setup-python step after init-pants and that also work. But maybe could pick this up in future if not fixed and have got couple of minutes of spare time.

[kaos]

yeah, I think the way to go could be to first check if pants is discoverable on PATH, and only amend PATH if not.