Automated Dependency Updates for GitHub Actions

Categories: ci

Renovate supports updating GitHub Actions dependencies.

File Matching

By default, Renovate will check any files matching any of the following regular expressions:

(^|/)(workflow-templates|\.(?:github|gitea|forgejo)/(?:workflows|actions))/.+\.ya?ml$
(^|/)action\.ya?ml$

For details on how to extend a manager's fileMatch value, please follow this link.

Supported datasources

This manager supports extracting the following datasources: gitea-tags, github-tags, github-runners.

Default config

{
  "fileMatch": [
    "(^|/)(workflow-templates|\\.(?:github|gitea|forgejo)/(?:workflows|actions))/.+\\.ya?ml$",
    "(^|/)action\\.ya?ml$"
  ]
}

Additional Information

The github-actions manager extracts dependencies from GitHub Actions workflow and workflow template files. It can also be used for Gitea and Forgejo Actions workflows as such are compatible with GitHub Actions workflows.

Digest pinning and updating

If you like to use digest pinning but want to follow the action version tag, you can use the sample below:

name: build

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@3df4ab11eba7bda6032a0b82a6bb43b11571feac # v4.0.0

Renovate will update the commit SHA according to the GitHub tag you specified. Renovate can update digests that use SHA1 and SHA256 algorithms. The GitHub tag is in the format of (prefix-)(v)1.0.0, where prefix and v are optional and 1.0.0 is the version number. Here are the examples of valid GitHub tags: 1.0.1, 1.0, 1, v1.0.1, v1.0, v1, prefix-1.0.1, prefix-1.0, prefix-1, prefix-v1.0.1, prefix-v1.0, prefix-v1.

If you want to automatically pin action digests add the helpers:pinGitHubActionDigests preset to the extends array:

{
  "extends": ["helpers:pinGitHubActionDigests"]
}

Non-support of Variables

Renovate ignores any GitHub runners which are configured in variables. For example, Renovate ignores the runner configured in the RUNNER variable:

name: build
on: [push]

env:
  RUNNER: ubuntu-22.04

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ${{ env.RUNNER }}

Ratchet support

The github-action manager understands ratchet comments, like # ratchet:actions/checkout@v2.1.0. This means that Renovate will:

• update the version of a pinned Ratchet version if needed
• not delete Ratchet comments after parsing them
• keep # ratchet:exclude comments

with:version support for built-in Actions

Renovate supports updating the "with" version for actions/setup-go, actions/setup-node, and actions/setup-python, although not all syntaxes are supported out of the box.

By default, Renovate will use npm-style semver versioning for go and python, and Renovate's built-in node versioning for updating node. The goal of these defaults is to match as closely as possible to what these GitHub Actions support. For example, normally the ^ syntax is not used in go or python, but it's supported in their respective actions.

Depending on your use case, you may need to change versioning manually. If you find a use case which you think Renovate could/should automatically detect and support without manual configuration, please raise a Discussion to suggest it.