As the issue doesn't seem to be with the workflow, you might to need check if there are any branch protection rules hindering this on your side.

CodePudding user response：

Thanks to Azeem's minimal working example, I have troubleshot my issue.

In my case, the error was generated because the commit had a note already (added by a separate step of the workflow).

Building on Azeem's solution, I faced further issues that made the workflow fail, such as:

• the commit has a note already (initial issue),
• the note added is not “pushed upstream” — i.e. it disappears once the workflow ends, instead of being permanently added to the history,
• other commits in the history have git notes already (but these are not synced by simply using the actions/checkout step),
• the workflow fails if run a second time.

Long story short, here is a workflow that robustly adds a git notes on the head checked out:

name: git notes

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  add_git_note:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          token: ${{ github.token }}
      - name: Add a git note
        run: |
          git fetch origin refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*
          git config user.name "github-actions"
          git config user.email "[email protected]"
          git notes add --allow-empty --force --message="foo bar"
          git notes show
          git push origin refs/notes/*

Explanations:

• git fetch origin refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*: “Pull” the git notes already existing in the repo (otherwise, it you'll get a conflict when trying to push your new note back upstream),
• git config: Create git ID, which is required to add a note and push upstream,
• git notes add: Add your note
  • --allow-empty: In case your message is empty (e.g. has been generated by a previous step of the workflow),
  • --force: In case you run the workflow again (so the commit has a note already). Note that (obviously), this overwrites any already existing git notes. You can otherwise have a look at git notes append.
• git notes show: Cheap logging
• git push origin refs/notes/*: Push the note back upstream (i.e. to the git repo), so that it survives the end of the workflow.

_References:

• _{git notes documentation}
• _{How to sync (i.e. “pull” and push) git notes with upstream}
• _{git notes | Enhance Git Commit Messages with Notes}
• _{Git Notes: git's coolest, most unloved­ feature}