Supplemental arguments and settings

GitHub Actions Importer has several supplemental arguments and settings to tailor the migration process to your needs.

In this article

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This article provides general information for configuring GitHub Actions Importer's supplemental arguments and settings, such as optional parameters, path arguments, and network settings.

Optional parameters

GitHub Actions Importer has several optional parameters that you can use to customize the migration process.

Limiting allowed actions

The following options can be used to limit which actions are allowed in converted workflows. When used in combination, these options expand the list of allowed actions. If none of these options are supplied, then all actions are allowed.

  • --allowed-actions specifies a list of actions to allow in converted workflows. Wildcards are supported. Any other actions other than those provided will be disallowed.

    For example:

    --allowed-actions actions/checkout@v4 actions/upload-artifact@* my-org/*

    You can provide an empty list to disallow all actions. For example, --allowed-actions=.

  • --allow-verified-actions specifies that all actions from verified creators are allowed.

  • --allow-github-created-actions specifies that actions published from the github or actions organizations are allowed.

    For example, such actions include github/super-linter and actions/checkout.

    This option is equivalent to --allowed-actions actions/* github/*.

Using a credentials file for authentication

The --credentials-file parameter specifies the path to a file containing credentials for different servers that GitHub Actions Importer can authenticate to. This is useful when build scripts (such as .travis.yml or jenkinsfile) are stored in multiple GitHub Enterprise Server instances.

A credentials file must be a YAML file containing a list of server and access token combinations. GitHub Actions Importer uses the credentials for the URL that most closely matches the network request being made.

For example:

- url: https://github.com
  access_token: ghp_mygeneraltoken
- url: https://github.com/specific_org/
  access_token: ghp_myorgspecifictoken
- url: https://jenkins.org
  access_token: abc123
  username: marty_mcfly

For the above credentials file, GitHub Actions Importer uses the access token ghp_mygeneraltoken to authenticate all network requests to https://github.com, unless the network request is for a repository in the specific_org organization. In that case, the ghp_myorgspecifictoken token is used to authenticate instead.

Alternative source code providers

GitHub Actions Importer can automatically fetch source code from non-GitHub repositories. A credentials file can specify the provider, the provider URL, and the credentials needed to retrieve the source code.

For example:

- url: https://gitlab.com
  access_token: super_secret_token
  provider: gitlab

For the above example, GitHub Actions Importer uses the token super_secret_token to retrieve any source code that is hosted on https://gitlab.com.

Supported values for provider are:

  • github (default)
  • gitlab
  • bitbucket_server
  • azure_devops

Controlling optional features

You can use the --features option to limit the features used in workflows that GitHub Actions Importer creates. This is useful for excluding newer GitHub Actions syntax from workflows when migrating to an older GitHub Enterprise Server instance. When using the --features option, you must specify the version of GitHub Enterprise Server that you are migrating to.

For example:

gh actions-importer dry-run ... --features ghes-3.3

The supported values for --features are:

  • all (default value)
  • ghes-latest
  • ghes-<number>, where <number> is the version of GitHub Enterprise Server, 3.0 or later. For example, ghes-3.3.

You can view the list of available feature flags by GitHub Actions Importer by running the list-features command. For example:

Shell
gh actions-importer list-features

You should see an output similar to the following.

Available feature flags:

actions/cache (disabled):
        Control usage of actions/cache inside of workflows. Outputs a comment if not enabled.
        GitHub Enterprise Server >= ghes-3.5 required.

composite-actions (enabled):
        Minimizes resulting workflow complexity through the use of composite actions. See https://docs.github.com/en/actions/creating-actions/creating-a-composite-action for more information.
        GitHub Enterprise Server >= ghes-3.4 required.

reusable-workflows (disabled):
        Avoid duplication by re-using existing workflows. See https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/reusing-workflows for more information.
        GitHub Enterprise Server >= ghes-3.4 required.

workflow-concurrency-option-allowed (enabled):
        Allows the use of the `concurrency` option in workflows. See https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#concurrency for more information.
        GitHub Enterprise Server >= ghes-3.2 required.

Enable features by passing --enable-features feature-1 feature-2
Disable features by passing --disable-features feature-1 feature-2

To toggle feature flags, you can use either of the following methods:

  • Use the --enable-features and --disable-features options when running a gh actions-importer command.
  • Use an environment variable for each feature flag.

You can use the --enable-features and --disable-features options to select specific features to enable or disable for the duration of the command. For example, the following command disables use of actions/cache and composite-actions:

gh actions-importer dry-run ... --disable-features=composite-actions actions/cache

You can use the configure --features command to interactively configure feature flags and automatically write them to your environment:

$ gh actions-importer configure --features

✔ Which features would you like to configure?: actions/cache, reusable-workflows
✔ actions/cache (disabled): Enable
? reusable-workflows (disabled):
› Enable
  Disable

Disabling network response caching

By default, GitHub Actions Importer caches responses from network requests to reduce network load and reduce run time. You can use the --no-http-cache option to disable the network cache. For example:

gh actions-importer forecast ... --no-http-cache

Path arguments

When running GitHub Actions Importer, path arguments are relative to the container's disk, so absolute paths relative to the container's host machine are not supported. When GitHub Actions Importer is run, the container's /data directory is mounted to the directory where GitHub Actions Importer is run.

For example, the following command, when used in the /Users/mona directory, outputs the GitHub Actions Importer audit summary to the /Users/mona/out directory:

gh actions-importer audit --output-dir /data/out

Using a proxy

To access servers that are configured with a HTTP proxy, you must set the following environment variables with the proxy's URL:

  • OCTOKIT_PROXY: for any GitHub server.
  • HTTP_PROXY (or HTTPS_PROXY): for any other servers.

For example:

export OCTOKIT_PROXY=https://proxy.example.com:8443
export HTTPS_PROXY=$OCTOKIT_PROXY

If the proxy requires authentication, a username and password must be included in the proxy URL. For example, https://username:password@proxy.url:port.

Disabling SSL certificate verification

By default, GitHub Actions Importer verifies SSL certificates when making network requests. You can disable SSL certificate verification with the --no-ssl-verify option. For example:

gh actions-importer audit --output-dir ./output --no-ssl-verify

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

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