running fallow dead-code --baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations locally vs github action CI

[cloud-walker]

If I create a baseline with save-baseline flag, and run this command locally, all works well, no errors.

but on my CI it gives a different output, failing, like its ignoring the baseline 🤔

Local run

pnpm fallow dead-code --baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations

> tos-dashboard-2@1.0.61 fallow /Users/luca/translated/tos-dashboard
> fallow dead-code --baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations

Comparing against baseline: fallow-baseline.json
  294 entry points detected (232 plugin, 60 manual entry, 2 package.json)

✓ No issues found (0.08s)

Github actions run

pnpm fallow dead-code --baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations
  pnpm fallow dead-code --baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations
  shell: /usr/bin/bash -e {0}
  env:
    PNPM_HOME: /home/runner/setup-pnpm/node_modules/.bin

> tos-dashboard-2@1.0.61 fallow /home/runner/work/tos-dashboard/tos-dashboard
> fallow dead-code --baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations

   0.020692144s  INFO fallow_analyze:run_plugins: active plugins plugins="vite, vitest, storybook, eslint, biome, prettier, typescript, tailwind, postcss, sentry, husky, lint-staged, msw, nodemon"
   0.162607220s  INFO fallow_analyze: incremental cache stats cache_hits=0 cache_misses=1239
Comparing against baseline: fallow-baseline.json
  294 entry points detected (232 plugin, 60 manual entry, 2 package.json)

✗ 38 violations (0.37s)
── Structure ───────────────────────────────────────

● Boundary violations (38)
  web/features/BackLink/BackLink.tsx:4 → web/routes/href.ts (frontend-features → frontend-routes)
  web/services/charts/charts.ts:21 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/connectors/contentRepo.ts:4 → web/features/preferences/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/content/content-details.ts:5 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/content/content-list.ts:7 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/customer/customer.ts:12 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/customer-locales/customer-locales.ts:4 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/intake/intake.ts:3 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/invoice/invoice.ts:3 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  web/services/issuesBy/issuesBy.ts:4 → web/features/tosDashApi/index.ts (frontend-services → frontend-features)
  ... and 28 more (--format json for full list)
  Imports that cross defined architecture zone boundaries — https://docs.fallow.tools/explanations/dead-code#boundary-violations
  To suppress: // fallow-ignore-file boundary-violations

This is the github job:

boundary-violations:
    runs-on: ubuntu-24.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v5
        with:
          run_install: true
        env:
          NPM_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}
      - run: pnpm fallow dead-code --baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations

[cloud-walker]

I may have an idea on why is not working, when you run --save-baseline from your machine, the saved paths are not relative to the root of the project, but from the root of the machine, so when the command runs on the CI, the paths does not match

[BartWaardenburg]

Thanks for the detailed report, @luca-nicola! This was a real bug affecting all baseline users in CI.

Root cause: baseline keys stored absolute file paths (e.g., /Users/luca/translated/tos-dashboard/src/ui/btn.ts). When loaded on a different machine (CI runner at /home/runner/work/...), no keys matched, so the baseline had zero effect.

Fix: all baseline keys now use relative paths (e.g., src/ui/btn.ts), making baselines portable across machines. This affects all issue types (unused files, exports, boundary violations, etc.), not just boundary violations.

Additional improvements shipped alongside:

• A warning now appears when a baseline loads but matches 0 issues, suggesting you re-save
• JSON output includes "baseline": {"entries": N, "matched": M} for programmatic stale-baseline detection
• The warning also works for dupes and health baselines

Action needed after upgrading: your existing fallow-baseline.json contains absolute paths from the old behavior. Delete it and re-save:

pnpm fallow dead-code --save-baseline=fallow-baseline.json --boundary-violations

Then commit the new baseline. From that point on, CI will match correctly.