Resolving Orb Source Tarball Extraction Error in CircleCI Orb Publish Job

Overview

You may encounter an error during the orb-tools/publish step related to the extraction of the orb source tarball. This article guides you through resolving the "No such file or directory" error for dist/orb_source.tar.gz.

Prerequisites

• Ensure you have a CircleCI account and are familiar with CircleCI configuration.
• Have an existing orb that you are trying to publish using orb-tools v12.

Solution

To avoid the tarball extraction error, it's crucial to run the orb-tools/pack job before orb-tools/publish and persist the workspace between these jobs. The orb-tools/pack job generates the orb_source.tar.gz file, which the orb-tools/publish job requires.

Here's an example of how to configure these jobs in your workflow:

workflows:
  test-deploy:
    jobs:
      - command-tests:
          filters: *filters
      - orb-tools/pack:
          filters: *filters
      - orb-tools/publish:
          orb_name: <namespace>/<orb_name>
          vcs_type: << pipeline.project.type >>
          pub_type: production
          requires:
            - orb-tools/pack
            - command-tests

In this setup, orb-tools/pack runs before orb-tools/publish, and the workspace is persisted between these jobs, ensuring that orb_source.tar.gz is available when orb-tools/publish runs.

By adding the orb-tools/pack job as a requirement for the orb-tools/publish job within the same workflow, the workspace layers will be correctly restored, and the tarball extraction error should be resolved.

Additional Resources

• CircleCI Orb Tools Orb Source Code
• CircleCI Orb Tools Orb Usage Examples
• CircleCI AWS CLI Orb Example
• CircleCI Support Forum for community discussions and troubleshooting.