Migrating from Bamboo with GitHub Actions Importer

Learn how to use GitHub Actions Importer to automate the migration of your Bamboo pipelines to GitHub Actions.

In this article

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About migrating from Bamboo with GitHub Actions Importer

The instructions below will guide you through configuring your environment to use GitHub Actions Importer to migrate Bamboo pipelines to GitHub Actions.

Prerequisites

  • A Bamboo account or organization with projects and pipelines that you want to convert to GitHub Actions workflows.

  • Bamboo version of 7.1.1 or greater.

  • Access to create a Bamboo personal access token for your account or organization.

  • An environment where you can run Linux-based containers, and can install the necessary tools.

    Note: The GitHub Actions Importer container and CLI do not need to be installed on the same server as your CI platform.

Limitations

There are some limitations when migrating from Bamboo to GitHub Actions with GitHub Actions Importer:

  • GitHub Actions Importer relies on the YAML specification generated by the Bamboo Server to perform migrations. When Bamboo does not support exporting something to YAML, the missing information is not migrated.
  • Trigger conditions are unsupported. When GitHub Actions Importer encounters a trigger with a condition, the condition is surfaced as a comment and the trigger is transformed without it.
  • Bamboo Plans with customized settings for storing artifacts are not transformed. Instead, artifacts are stored and retrieved using the upload-artifact and download-artifact actions.
  • Disabled plans must be disabled manually in the GitHub UI. For more information, see "Disabling and enabling a workflow."
  • Disabled jobs are transformed with a if: false condition which prevents it from running. You must remove this to re-enable the job.
  • Disabled tasks are not transformed because they are not included in the exported plan when using the Bamboo API.
  • Bamboo provides options to clean up build workspaces after a build is complete. These are not transformed because it is assumed GitHub-hosted runners or ephemeral self-hosted runners will automatically handle this.
  • The hanging build detection options are not transformed because there is no equivalent in GitHub Actions. The closest option is timeout-minutes on a job, which can be used to set the maximum number of minutes to let a job run. For more information, see "Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions."
  • Pattern match labeling is not transformed because there is no equivalent in GitHub Actions.
  • All artifacts are transformed into an actions/upload-artifact, regardless of whether they are shared or not, so they can be downloaded from any job in the workflow.
  • Permissions are not transformed because there is no suitable equivalent in GitHub Actions.
  • If the Bamboo version is between 7.1.1 and 8.1.1, project and plan variables will not be migrated.

Manual tasks

Certain Bamboo constructs must be migrated manually. These include:

  • Masked variables
  • Artifact expiry settings

Installing the GitHub Actions Importer CLI extension

  1. Install the GitHub Actions Importer CLI extension:

    Bash
    gh extension install github/gh-actions-importer

  2. Verify that the extension is installed:

    $ gh actions-importer -h
Options:
  -?, -h, --help  Show help and usage information

Commands:
  update     Update to the latest version of GitHub Actions Importer.
  version    Display the version of GitHub Actions Importer.
  configure  Start an interactive prompt to configure credentials used to authenticate with your CI server(s).
  audit      Plan your CI/CD migration by analyzing your current CI/CD footprint.
  forecast   Forecast GitHub Actions usage from historical pipeline utilization.
  dry-run    Convert a pipeline to a GitHub Actions workflow and output its yaml file.
  migrate    Convert a pipeline to a GitHub Actions workflow and open a pull request with the changes.

Configuring credentials

The configure CLI command is used to set required credentials and options for GitHub Actions Importer when working with Bamboo and GitHub.

  1. Create a GitHub personal access token (classic). For more information, see "Managing your personal access tokens."

    Your token must have the workflow scope.

    After creating the token, copy it and save it in a safe location for later use.

  2. Create a Bamboo personal access token. For more information, see Personal Access Tokens in the Bamboo documentation.

    Your token must have the following permissions, depending on which resources will be transformed.

    Resource TypeViewView ConfigurationEdit
    Build Plan
    Deployment Project
    Deployment Environment

    After creating the token, copy it and save it in a safe location for later use.

  3. In your terminal, run the GitHub Actions Importer configure CLI command:

    gh actions-importer configure

    The configure command will prompt you for the following information:

    • For "Which CI providers are you configuring?", use the arrow keys to select Bamboo, press Space to select it, then press Enter.
    • For "Personal access token for GitHub", enter the value of the personal access token (classic) that you created earlier, and press Enter.
    • For "Base url of the GitHub instance", enter the URL for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, and press Enter.
    • For "Personal access token for Bamboo", enter the value for the Bamboo personal access token that you created earlier, and press Enter.
    • For "Base url of the Bamboo instance", enter the URL for your Bamboo Server or Bamboo Data Center instance, and press Enter.

    An example of the configure command is shown below:

    $ gh actions-importer configure
✔ Which CI providers are you configuring?: Bamboo
Enter the following values (leave empty to omit):
✔ Personal access token for GitHub: ***************
✔ Base url of the GitHub instance: https://github.com
✔ Personal access token for Bamboo: ********************
✔ Base url of the Bamboo instance: https://bamboo.example.com
Environment variables successfully updated.

  4. In your terminal, run the GitHub Actions Importer update CLI command to connect to GitHub Packages Container registry and ensure that the container image is updated to the latest version:

    gh actions-importer update

    The output of the command should be similar to below:

    Updating ghcr.io/actions-importer/cli:latest...
ghcr.io/actions-importer/cli:latest up-to-date

Perform an audit of Bamboo

You can use the audit command to get a high-level view of all projects in a Bamboo organization.

The audit command performs the following steps:

  1. Fetches all of the projects defined in a Bamboo organization.
  2. Converts each pipeline to its equivalent GitHub Actions workflow.
  3. Generates a report that summarizes how complete and complex of a migration is possible with GitHub Actions Importer.

Running the audit command

To perform an audit of a Bamboo instance, run the following command in your terminal:

gh actions-importer audit bamboo --output-dir tmp/audit

Inspecting the audit results

The files in the specified output directory contain the results of the audit. See the audit_summary.md file for a summary of the audit results.

The audit summary has the following sections.

Pipelines

The "Pipelines" section contains a high-level statistics regarding the conversion rate done by GitHub Actions Importer.

Listed below are some key terms that can appear in the "Pipelines" section:

  • Successful pipelines had 100% of the pipeline constructs and individual items converted automatically to their GitHub Actions equivalent.
  • Partially successful pipelines had all of the pipeline constructs converted, however, there were some individual items that were not converted automatically to their GitHub Actions equivalent.
  • Unsupported pipelines are definition types that are not supported by GitHub Actions Importer.
  • Failed pipelines encountered a fatal error when being converted. This can occur for one of three reasons:
    • The pipeline was originally misconfigured and not valid.
    • GitHub Actions Importer encountered an internal error when converting it.
    • There was an unsuccessful network response that caused the pipeline to be inaccessible, which is often due to invalid credentials.

Build steps

The "Build steps" section contains an overview of individual build steps that are used across all pipelines, and how many were automatically converted by GitHub Actions Importer.

Listed below are some key terms that can appear in the "Build steps" section:

  • A known build step is a step that was automatically converted to an equivalent action.
  • An unknown build step is a step that was not automatically converted to an equivalent action.
  • An unsupported build step is a step that is either:
    • Fundamentally not supported by GitHub Actions.
    • Configured in a way that is incompatible with GitHub Actions.
  • An action is a list of the actions that were used in the converted workflows. This can be important for:
    • If you use GitHub Enterprise Server, gathering the list of actions to sync to your instance.
    • Defining an organization-level allowlist of actions that are used. This list of actions is a comprehensive list of actions that your security or compliance teams may need to review.

Manual tasks

The "Manual tasks" section contains an overview of tasks that GitHub Actions Importer is not able to complete automatically, and that you must complete manually.

Listed below are some key terms that can appear in the "Manual tasks" section:

  • A secret is a repository or organization-level secret that is used in the converted pipelines. These secrets must be created manually in GitHub Actions for these pipelines to function properly. For more information, see "Using secrets in GitHub Actions."
  • A self-hosted runner refers to a label of a runner that is referenced in a converted pipeline that is not a GitHub-hosted runner. You will need to manually define these runners for these pipelines to function properly.

Files

The final section of the audit report provides a manifest of all the files that were written to disk during the audit.

Each pipeline file has a variety of files included in the audit, including:

  • The original pipeline as it was defined in GitHub.
  • Any network responses used to convert the pipeline.
  • The converted workflow file.
  • Stack traces that can be used to troubleshoot a failed pipeline conversion.

Additionally, the workflow_usage.csv file contains a comma-separated list of all actions, secrets, and runners that are used by each successfully converted pipeline. This can be useful for determining which workflows use which actions, secrets, or runners, and can be useful for performing security reviews.

Forecasting usage

You can use the forecast command to forecast potential GitHub Actions usage by computing metrics from completed pipeline runs in your Bamboo instance.

Running the forecast command

To perform a forecast of potential GitHub Actions usage, run the following command in your terminal. By default, GitHub Actions Importer includes the previous seven days in the forecast report.

gh actions-importer forecast bamboo --output-dir tmp/forecast_reports

Forecasting a project

To limit the forecast to the plans and deployments environments associated with a project, you can use the --project option, where the value is set to a build project key.

For example:

gh actions-importer forecast bamboo --project PAN --output-dir tmp/forecast_reports

Inspecting the forecast report

The forecast_report.md file in the specified output directory contains the results of the forecast.

Listed below are some key terms that can appear in the forecast report:

  • The job count is the total number of completed jobs.
  • The pipeline count is the number of unique pipelines used.
  • Execution time describes the amount of time a runner spent on a job. This metric can be used to help plan for the cost of GitHub-hosted runners.
    • This metric is correlated to how much you should expect to spend in GitHub Actions. This will vary depending on the hardware used for these minutes. You can use the GitHub Actions pricing calculator to estimate the costs.
  • Queue time metrics describe the amount of time a job spent waiting for a runner to be available to execute it.
  • Concurrent jobs metrics describe the amount of jobs running at any given time. This metric can be used to

Perform a dry-run migration of a Bamboo pipeline

You can use the dry-run command to convert a Bamboo pipeline to an equivalent GitHub Actions workflow. A dry-run creates the output files in a specified directory, but does not open a pull request to migrate the pipeline.

Running a dry-run migration for a build plan

To perform a dry run of migrating your Bamboo build plan to GitHub Actions, run the following command in your terminal, replacing :my_plan_slug with the plan's project and plan key in the format <projectKey>-<planKey> (for example: PAN-SCRIP).

gh actions-importer dry-run bamboo build --plan-slug :my_plan_slug --output-dir tmp/dry-run

Running a dry-run migration for a deployment project

To perform a dry run of migrating your Bamboo deployment project to GitHub Actions, run the following command in your terminal, replacing :my_deployment_project_id with the ID of the deployment project you are converting.

gh actions-importer dry-run bamboo deployment --deployment-project-id :my_deployment_project_id --output-dir tmp/dry-run

You can view the logs of the dry run and the converted workflow files in the specified output directory.

If there is anything that GitHub Actions Importer was not able to convert automatically, such as unknown build steps or a partially successful pipeline, you might want to create custom transformers to further customize the conversion process. For more information, see "Extending GitHub Actions Importer with custom transformers."

Perform a production migration of a Bamboo pipeline

You can use the migrate command to convert a Bamboo pipeline and open a pull request with the equivalent GitHub Actions workflow.

Running the migrate command for a build plan

To migrate a Bamboo build plan to GitHub Actions, run the following command in your terminal, replacing the target-url value with the URL for your GitHub repository, and :my_plan_slug with the plan's project and plan key in the format <projectKey>-<planKey>.

gh actions-importer migrate bamboo build --plan-slug :my_plan_slug --target-url :target_url --output-dir tmp/migrate

The command's output includes the URL to the pull request that adds the converted workflow to your repository. An example of a successful output is similar to the following:

$ gh actions-importer migrate bamboo build --plan-slug :PROJECTKEY-PLANKEY --target-url https://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo --output-dir tmp/migrate
[2022-08-20 22:08:20] Logs: 'tmp/migrate/log/actions-importer-20220916-014033.log'
[2022-08-20 22:08:20] Pull request: 'https://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/pull/1'

Running the migrate command for a deployment project

To migrate a Bamboo deployment project to GitHub Actions, run the following command in your terminal, replacing the target-url value with the URL for your GitHub repository, and :my_deployment_project_id with the ID of the deployment project you are converting.

gh actions-importer migrate bamboo deployment --deployment-project-id :my_deployment_project_id --target-url :target_url --output-dir tmp/migrate

The command's output includes the URL to the pull request that adds the converted workflow to your repository. An example of a successful output is similar to the following:

$ gh actions-importer migrate bamboo deployment --deployment-project-id 123 --target-url https://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo --output-dir tmp/migrate
[2023-04-20 22:08:20] Logs: 'tmp/migrate/log/actions-importer-20230420-014033.log'
[2023-04-20 22:08:20] Pull request: 'https://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/pull/1'

Inspecting the pull request

The output from a successful run of the migrate command contains a link to the new pull request that adds the converted workflow to your repository.

Some important elements of the pull request include:

  • In the pull request description, a section called Manual steps, which lists steps that you must manually complete before you can finish migrating your pipelines to GitHub Actions. For example, this section might tell you to create any secrets used in your workflows.
  • The converted workflows file. Select the Files changed tab in the pull request to view the workflow file that will be added to your GitHub Enterprise Server repository.

When you are finished inspecting the pull request, you can merge it to add the workflow to your GitHub Enterprise Server repository.

Reference

This section contains reference information on environment variables, optional arguments, and supported syntax when using GitHub Actions Importer to migrate from Bamboo.

Using environment variables

GitHub Actions Importer uses environment variables for its authentication configuration. These variables are set when following the configuration process using the configure command. For more information, see the "Configuring credentials" section.

GitHub Actions Importer uses the following environment variables to connect to your Bamboo instance:

  • GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN: The personal access token (classic) used to create pull requests with a converted workflow (requires repo and workflow scopes).
  • GITHUB_INSTANCE_URL: The URL to the target GitHub instance (for example, https://github.com).
  • BAMBOO_ACCESS_TOKEN: The Bamboo personal access token used to authenticate with your Bamboo instance.
  • BAMBOO_INSTANCE_URL: The URL to the Bamboo instance (for example, https://bamboo.example.com).

These environment variables can be specified in a .env.local file that is loaded by GitHub Actions Importer when it is run.

Optional arguments

There are optional arguments you can use with the GitHub Actions Importer subcommands to customize your migration.

--source-file-path

You can use the --source-file-path argument with the dry-run or migrate subcommands.

By default, GitHub Actions Importer fetches pipeline contents from the Bamboo instance. The --source-file-path argument tells GitHub Actions Importer to use the specified source file path instead.

For example:

gh actions-importer dry-run bamboo build --plan-slug IN-COM -o tmp/bamboo --source-file-path ./path/to/my/bamboo/file.yml

--config-file-path

You can use the --config-file-path argument with the audit, dry-run, and migrate subcommands.

By default, GitHub Actions Importer fetches pipeline contents from the Bamboo instance. The --config-file-path argument tells GitHub Actions Importer to use the specified source files instead.

Audit example

In this example, GitHub Actions Importer uses the specified YAML configuration file to perform an audit.

gh actions-importer audit bamboo -o tmp/bamboo --config-file-path "./path/to/my/bamboo/config.yml"

To audit a Bamboo instance using a config file, the config file must be in the following format, and each repository_slug must be unique:

source_files:
  - repository_slug: IN/COM
    path: path/to/one/source/file.yml
  - repository_slug: IN/JOB
    path: path/to/another/source/file.yml
Dry run example

In this example, GitHub Actions Importer uses the specified YAML configuration file as the source file to perform a dry run.

The repository slug is built using the --plan-slug option. The source file path is matched and pulled from the specified source file.

gh actions-importer dry-run bamboo build --plan-slug IN-COM -o tmp/bamboo --config-file-path "./path/to/my/bamboo/config.yml"

Supported syntax for Bamboo pipelines

The following table shows the type of properties that GitHub Actions Importer is currently able to convert.

BambooGitHub ActionsStatus
environmentsjobsSupported
environments.<environment_id>jobs.<job_id>Supported
<job_id>.artifactsjobs.<job_id>.steps.actions/upload-artifactSupported
<job_id>.artifact-subscriptionsjobs.<job_id>.steps.actions/download-artifactSupported
<job_id>.dockerjobs.<job_id>.containerSupported
<job_id>.final-tasksjobs.<job_id>.steps.ifSupported
<job_id>.requirementsjobs.<job_id>.runs-onSupported
<job_id>.tasksjobs.<job_id>.stepsSupported
<job_id>.variablesjobs.<job_id>.envSupported
stagesjobs.<job_id>.needsSupported
stages.<stage_id>.finaljobs.<job_id>.ifSupported
stages.<stage_id>.jobsjobsSupported
stages.<stage_id>.jobs.<job_id>jobs.<job_id>Supported
stages.<stage_id>.manualjobs.<job_id>.environmentSupported
triggersonSupported
dependenciesjobs.<job_id>.steps.<gh cli step>Partially Supported
branchesNot applicableUnsupported
deployment.deployment-permissionsNot applicableUnsupported
environment-permissionsNot applicableUnsupported
notificationsNot applicableUnsupported
plan-permissionsNot applicableUnsupported
release-namingNot applicableUnsupported
repositoriesNot applicableUnsupported

For more information about supported Bamboo concept and plugin mappings, see the github/gh-actions-importer repository.

Environment variable mapping

GitHub Actions Importer uses the mapping in the table below to convert default Bamboo environment variables to the closest equivalent in GitHub Actions.

BambooGitHub Actions
bamboo.agentId${{ github.runner_name }}
bamboo.agentWorkingDirectory${{ github.workspace }}
bamboo.buildKey${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.job }}
bamboo.buildNumber${{ github.run_id }}
bamboo.buildPlanName${{ github.repository }}-${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.job }
bamboo.buildResultKey${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.job }}-${{ github.run_id }}
bamboo.buildResultsUrl${{ github.server_url }}/${{ github.repository }}/actions/runs/${{ github.run_id }}
bamboo.build.working.directory${{ github.workspace }}
bamboo.deploy.project${{ github.repository }}
bamboo.ManualBuildTriggerReason.userName${{ github.actor }}
bamboo.planKey${{ github.workflow }}
bamboo.planName${{ github.repository }}-${{ github.workflow }}
bamboo.planRepository.branchDisplayName${{ github.ref }}
bamboo.planRepository.<position>.branch${{ github.ref }}
bamboo.planRepository.<position>.branchName${{ github.ref }}
bamboo.planRepository.<position>.name${{ github.repository }}
bamboo.planRepository.<position>.repositoryUrl${{ github.server }}/${{ github.repository }}
bamboo.planRepository.<position>.revision${{ github.sha }}
bamboo.planRepository.<position>.username${{ github.actor}}
bamboo.repository.branch.name${{ github.ref }}
bamboo.repository.git.branch${{ github.ref }}
bamboo.repository.git.repositoryUrl${{ github.server }}/${{ github.repository }}
bamboo.repository.pr.key${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}
bamboo.repository.pr.sourceBranch${{ github.event.pull_request.head.ref }}
bamboo.repository.pr.targetBranch${{ github.event.pull_request.base.ref }}
bamboo.resultsUrl${{ github.server_url }}/${{ github.repository }}/actions/runs/${{ github.run_id }}
bamboo.shortJobKey${{ github.job }}
bamboo.shortJobName${{ github.job }}
bamboo.shortPlanKey${{ github.workflow }}
bamboo.shortPlanName${{ github.workflow }}

Note: Unknown variables are transformed to ${{ env.<variableName> }} and must be replaced or added under env for proper operation. For example, ${bamboo.jira.baseUrl} will become ${{ env.jira_baseUrl }}.

System Variables

System variables used in tasks are transformed to the equivalent bash shell variable and are assumed to be available. For example, ${system.<variable.name>} will be transformed to $variable_name. We recommend you verify this to ensure proper operation of the workflow.

Portions have been adapted from https://github.com/github/gh-actions-importer/ under the MIT license:

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