Can I define a global across jobs - github-actions

Question

I have a workflow with 2 jobs:
on: [push]
jobs:
ssql:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
### bunch of steps in between ###
- name: Upload data as artifact
uses: actions/upload-artifact#v2
with:
name: ${{ env.GAME }} + "-" + "data"
path: output_data/training-data.csv
env:
GAME: "FunGame"
Rtrain:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
name: Train model
needs: ssql
steps:
- name: checkout current repo
uses: actions/checkout#v2
- name: Retreive data from ssql job
uses: actions/download-artifact#v2
with:
name: ${{ env.GAME }} + "-" + "data"
env:
GAME: "FunGame"
I had to set env variable $GAME twice, once in each job. Is there any syntax where I can e.g. add this at the top to make it truly global across jobs, e.g. something like:
on: [push]
env:
GAME: "FunGame"
jobs: ...

Answer 1

You can set an env variable exactly as you described at the workflow level.
Just note that it can conflict with env variables set at the job level, or at the step level, if they have the same name. In that case, the variable used is the most specific one: STEP over JOB over WORKFLOW.
Reference 1 + Reference 2
Here is an example of how to use env variables at different levels (without conflict):
name: Environment Workflow
on:
workflow_dispatch:
env:
WORKFLOW_VARIABLE: WORKFLOW
jobs:
job1:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
env:
JOB_VARIABLE: JOB
steps:
- name: Run Commands with various variables
if: ${{ env.WORKFLOW_VARIABLE == 'WORKFLOW' }}
env:
STEP_VARIABLE: STEP
run: |
echo "Hello World"
echo "This is the $WORKFLOW_VARIABLE environment variable"
echo "This is the $JOB_VARIABLE environment variable"
echo "This is the $STEP_VARIABLE environment variable"
Full workflow implementation (if you want to reproduce)
Previous workflow run display