Send workflow_dispatch event to not-default branch

GitHub Actions allows to define workflow_dispatch workflow trigger:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:  # manual trigger

This event allows to manually trigger the workflow via UI, rest API call or CLI. But according to the docs:

This event will only trigger a workflow run if the workflow file exists on the default branch

which is quite inconvenient during development of workflows, or when a workflow must be triggered on a side/release/hotfix branch, or when actions in the workflow rely on specific triggers.

Solution

Contrary to what documentation says, it’s actually possible to send workflow_dispatch event to a workflow, which does not exist on the default branch.

Prerequisite: the workflow must run at least once. For example, temporary add a pull_request trigger to the workflow, create a PR and let the workflow to start. After that pull_request trigger can be removed.

Use CLI to send the event to the side branch:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=YOUR_GITHUB_TOKEN
gh workflow run manual_workflow.yaml --repo my_org/my_repo --ref side_branch

and go to “Actions” tab of your repo to watch the workflow run.

Solution#

Solution