From 4fc2dde1767b4b3c3871b81c9a33bc89437b457e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?Rapha=C3=ABl=20Titsworth-Morin?= <raphael@raphaeltm.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:34:13 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] feat: add capture-output input to prevent GHA memory limit
 failures

Large deployments (e.g. Pulumi with many resources) can exceed GitHub
Actions' memory limit when the full stdout is captured as a step output.
This adds a `capture-output` input (default: true) that lets callers
disable stdout capture when they don't need it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 README.md   | 16 ++++++++++++++++
 action.yaml | 19 ++++++++++++++-----
 2 files changed, 30 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 5eac2a6..df9d616 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -111,6 +111,22 @@ jobs:
           command: "compose up --project-name my-project"
 ```
 
+### Disabling Output Capture
+
+By default, the action captures the command's stdout as an output (`outputs.stdout`). For large deployments, this can exceed GitHub Actions' memory limits and cause the workflow to fail even though the deployment succeeded. If you don't need the stdout output, disable it:
+
+```yaml
+jobs:
+  test:
+    # [...]
+    steps:
+      # [...]
+      - name: Deploy
+        uses: DefangLabs/defang-github-action@v2
+        with:
+          capture-output: false
+```
+
 ### Full Example
 
 Here is a full example of a GitHub workflow that does everything we've discussed so far:
diff --git a/action.yaml b/action.yaml
index 65ea613..9aef8ae 100644
--- a/action.yaml
+++ b/action.yaml
@@ -54,10 +54,14 @@ inputs:
     description: "Allow upgrading the CD image and Pulumi version to the latest available"
     required: false
     default: "false"
+  capture-output:
+    description: "Capture the command's stdout as an output. Disable for large deployments to avoid GitHub Actions memory limits."
+    required: false
+    default: "true"
 
 outputs:
   stdout:
-    description: "The stdout of the command."
+    description: "The stdout of the command. Only available when capture-output is 'true'."
     value: ${{ steps.command.outputs.stdout }}
 
 runs:
@@ -188,13 +192,18 @@ runs:
         unset $CONFIG_ENV_VARS_INIT_RANDOM $CONFIG_ENV_VARS dont_complain_on_empty
 
         echo defang $COMMAND "${params[@]}"
-        output=$(defang $COMMAND "${params[@]}" | tee /dev/stderr)
-        echo "stdout<<DEFANG_EOF" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-        echo "$output" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
-        echo "DEFANG_EOF" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+        if [[ "$CAPTURE_OUTPUT" =~ ^(y|Y|yes|Yes|YES|true|True|TRUE|on|On|ON|1)$ ]]; then
+          output=$(defang $COMMAND "${params[@]}" | tee /dev/stderr)
+          echo "stdout<<DEFANG_EOF" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+          echo "$output" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+          echo "DEFANG_EOF" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
+        else
+          defang $COMMAND "${params[@]}"
+        fi
       env:
         COMMAND: ${{ inputs['command'] }}
         COMPOSE_FILES: ${{ inputs['compose-files'] }}
         CONFIG_ENV_VARS: ${{ inputs['config-env-vars'] }}
         CONFIG_ENV_VARS_INIT_RANDOM: ${{ inputs['config-vars-init-random'] }}
+        CAPTURE_OUTPUT: ${{ inputs['capture-output'] }}