Unable to deploy firebase functions with Github actions, it doesn't recognize a firebase project using Google service account for authentification - firebase

Question

I'm following this Medium article to deploy firebase functions using Github actions.
This is the workflow in .github/workflows/firebase-deploy.yml
name: Deploy Cloud Functions
on:
workflow_dispatch:
push:
branches:
- master
- pre-production
- github-actions
- "feature/**"
paths:
- "functions/**"
jobs:
build_and_deploy:
runs-on: macos-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
- uses: actions/setup-node#v1
with:
node-version: 16.x
- uses: actions/cache#v2
with:
path: ~/.npm
key: macOS-node-${{ hashFiles('**/functions/package-lock.json') }}
restore-keys: |
macOS-node-
- name: Build Cloud Functions
run: npm ci
working-directory: functions
- name: Create SA key
run: echo '${{ secrets.FIREBASE_DEV_SERVICE_ACCOUNT }}' > gcloud.json
working-directory: functions
- name: Print json
run: echo "$(cat gcloud.json)"
working-directory: functions
- name: Install firebase tools
run: npm install -g firebase-tools
working-directory: functions
- name: Deploy Cloud Functions
run: export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=gcloud.json && npx firebase-tools deploy --only functions --json
working-directory: functions
In the step Deploy Cloud Functions of the github action, I get the following error:
Run export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=gcloud.json && npx firebase-tools deploy --only functions --json
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=gcloud.json && npx firebase-tools deploy --only functions --json
shell: /bin/bash -e ***0***
***
"status": "error",
"error": "No project active, but project aliases are available.\n\nRun \u001b[1mfirebase use <alias>\u001b[22m with one of these options:\n\n dev (web3army-pre-prod)\n prod (blockchainarmy-6ed76)"
***
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.
When deploying normally on the terminal without github actions, I use firebase use dev. Here the project dev is specified inside the json that I created with the google service account and also used to create the secret in the repo as explained in the tutorial. It seems like that GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS is not initialized correctly with gcloud.json.
I tried to print the content of the json to check if it was okay but the result is encrypted with ***, so it's difficult to understand what is going wrong. Thanks a lot.