Answer by Slava for Passing env variable inputs to a reusable workflow

A simple experiment shows that it is not necessary to echo variable to the $GITHUB_OUTPUT and it is enough to define it just in the outputs

name: Test outputson:  workflow_dispatch:env:  BRANCH: mainjobs:  variables:    name: Compute outputs    runs-on: ubuntu-latest    outputs:      branch: ${{ env.BRANCH }}      # branch: ${{ steps.variables.outputs.branch }}    steps:      - name: Echo        if: false        run: echo      # - name: Set outputs variables      #   id: variables      #   run: echo      #     echo "branch=${{ env.BRANCH }}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"  show:    name: Show outputs    needs: variables    runs-on: ubuntu-latest    steps:      - name: Echo outputs        run: |          echo "branch: ${{ needs.variables.outputs.branch }}"

This simplify variables pass, especially when we have a lot of them. It can be used for simple cases when we need just to pass variable value, but not for computations.

A single cons is that we need at least one step in the first job, but we can set a dummy one or disable it.