GitHub Actions: Move branch to another branch - github

Question

So I'm working on a project where I have a number of Sass stylesheets, and I want to host it on GitHub Pages. I've pointed Pages to the gh-pages branch, and when I make a change I am trying to set up Actions to 'teleport' that branch to my freshly-pushed main source code branch, make a commit containing the generation of new CSS files from the Sass source code, and push that to the gh-pages branch for Pages to host. This way I know it has started from the latest version of the source, with no leftover generated files, and run a single deterministic compilation to create the CSS files I'm after.
I've been able to set this up, but the only way I've been able to get it working is by deleting the gh-pages branch, checking out the main branch, recreating gh-pages and committing from there. The problem with this is that, when the gh-pages branch gets deleted, GitHub Pages stops tracking it and moves back to the main branch. Here's the workflow anyway, just for reference:
name: Compile Sass
on:
push:
branches:
- main
jobs:
build_css:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout source Git branch
uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
ref: main
fetch-depth: 10
submodules: true
- name: Delete gh-pages branch
uses: dawidd6/action-delete-branch#v3
with:
github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
branches: gh-pages
- name: Create fresh gh-pages branch
uses: peterjgrainger/action-create-branch#v2.0.1
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
with:
branch: 'gh-pages'
- name: Checkout new gh-pages branch
uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
ref: gh-pages
fetch-depth: 1
- name: Compile CSS from SCSS files
uses: gha-utilities/sass-build#v0.4.5
with:
source: styles/index.scss
destination: styles/index.css
- name: Add and commit changes to gh-pages branch
run: |
git config --local user.email 'action#github.com'
git config --local user.name 'GitHub Action'
git add styles/*
git commit -m 'Compile website'
- name: Push changes
uses: ad-m/github-push-action#master
with:
github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
branch: gh-pages
Solutions I've tried using git rebase and git reset haven't worked for a range of reasons, and I've found that the former (using git rebase --onto main gh-pages gh-pages) works on my local machine but not in CI.
I feel like this must be a reasonably normal thing to want to do, so are there any more widely-accepted methods that I've missed?