Configuring the dependency review action

About the dependency review action

The "dependency review action" refers to the specific action that can report on differences in a pull request within the GitHub Actions context, and add enforcement mechanisms to the GitHub Actions workflow.

The dependency review action scans your pull requests for dependency changes and raises an error if any new dependencies have known vulnerabilities. The action is supported by an API endpoint that compares the dependencies between two revisions and reports any differences.

For more information about the action and the API endpoint, see the dependency-review-action documentation, and REST API endpoints for dependency review.

Organization owners can roll out dependency review at scale by enforcing the use of the dependency review action across repositories in the organization. This involves the use of repository rulesets for which you'll set the dependency review action as a required workflow, which means that pull requests can only be merged once the workflow passes all the required checks. For more information, see Enforcing dependency review across an organization.

Here is a list of common configuration options. For more information, and a full list of options, see Dependency Review on the GitHub Marketplace.

Option	Required	Usage
fail-on-severity		Defines the threshold for level of severity (low, moderate, high, critical). The action will fail on any pull requests that introduce vulnerabilities of the specified severity level or higher.
allow-licenses		Contains a list of allowed licenses. You can find the possible values for this parameter in the Licenses page of the API documentation. The action will fail on pull requests that introduce dependencies with licenses that do not match the list.
deny-licenses		Contains a list of prohibited licenses. You can find the possible values for this parameter in the Licenses page of the API documentation. The action will fail on pull requests that introduce dependencies with licenses that match the list.
fail-on-scopes		Contains a list of strings representing the build environments you want to support (development, runtime, unknown). The action will fail on pull requests that introduce vulnerabilities in the scopes that match the list.
comment-summary-in-pr		Enable or disable the reporting of the review summary as a comment in the pull request. If enabled, you must give the workflow or job the pull-requests: write permission. With each execution, a new comment will overwrite the existing one.
allow-ghsas		Contains a list of GitHub Advisory Database IDs that can be skipped during detection. You can find the possible values for this parameter in the GitHub Advisory Database.
config-file		Specifies a path to a configuration file. The configuration file can be local to the repository or a file located in an external repository.
external-repo-token		Specifies a token for fetching the configuration file, if the file resides in a private external repository. The token must have read access to the repository.

Configuring the dependency review action

There are two methods of configuring the dependency review action:

• Inlining the configuration options in your workflow file.
• Referencing a configuration file in your workflow file.

Notice that all of the examples use a short version number for the action (v3) instead of a semver release number (for example, v3.0.8). This ensures that you use the most recent minor version of the action.

Using inline configuration to set up the dependency review action

1. Add a new YAML workflow to your .github/workflows folder.

   YAML

   name: 'Dependency Review'
   on: [pull_request]
   
   permissions:
     contents: read
   
   jobs:
     dependency-review:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
        - name: 'Checkout Repository'
          uses: actions/checkout@v4
        - name: Dependency Review
          uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
   

2. Specify your settings.

   This dependency review action example file illustrates how you can use the available configuration options.

   YAML

   name: 'Dependency Review'
   on: [pull_request]
   
   permissions:
     contents: read
   
   jobs:
     dependency-review:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: 'Checkout Repository'
         uses: actions/checkout@v4
       - name: Dependency Review
         uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
         with:
           # Possible values: "critical", "high", "moderate", "low"
           fail-on-severity: critical
   
           
           # You can only include one of these two options: `allow-licenses` and `deny-licenses`
           # ([String]). Only allow these licenses (optional)
           # Possible values: Any SPDX-compliant license identifiers or expressions from https://spdx.org/licenses/
           allow-licenses: GPL-3.0, BSD-3-Clause, MIT
           # ([String]). Block the pull request on these licenses (optional)
           # Possible values: Any SPDX-compliant license identifiers or expressions from https://spdx.org/licenses/
           deny-licenses: LGPL-2.0, BSD-2-Clause
           
           # ([String]). Skip these GitHub Advisory Database IDs during detection (optional)
           # Possible values: Any valid GitHub Advisory Database ID from https://github.com/advisories
           allow-ghsas: GHSA-abcd-1234-5679, GHSA-efgh-1234-5679
           # ([String]). Block pull requests that introduce vulnerabilities in the scopes that match this list (optional)
           # Possible values: "development", "runtime", "unknown"
           fail-on-scopes: development, runtime
   

Using a configuration file to set up dependency review action

1. Add a new YAML workflow to your .github/workflows folder and use config-file to specify that you are using a configuration file.

   YAML

   name: 'Dependency Review'
   on: [pull_request]
   
   permissions:
    contents: read
   
   jobs:
     dependency-review:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
       - name: 'Checkout Repository'
         uses: actions/checkout@v4
       - name: Dependency Review
         uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
         with:
          # ([String]). Representing a path to a configuration file local to the repository or in an external repository.
          # Possible values: An absolute path to a local file or an external file.
          config-file: './.github/dependency-review-config.yml'
          # Optional alternative syntax for an external file: OWNER/REPOSITORY/FILENAME@BRANCH (uncomment if preferred)
          # config-file: 'github/octorepo/dependency-review-config.yml@main'
   
          # ([Token]) Use if your configuration file resides in a private external repository.
          # Possible values: Any GitHub token with read access to the private external repository.
          external-repo-token: 'ghp_123456789abcde'
   

2. Create the configuration file in the path you have specified.

   This YAML example file illustrates how you can use the available configuration options.

   YAML

     # Possible values: "critical", "high", "moderate", "low"
     fail-on-severity: critical
   
     # You can only include one of these two options: `allow-licenses` and `deny-licenses`
     # ([String]). Only allow these licenses (optional)
     # Possible values: Any SPDX-compliant license identifiers or expressions from https://spdx.org/licenses/
     allow-licenses:
       - GPL-3.0
       - BSD-3-Clause
       - MIT
      # ([String]). Block the pull request on these licenses (optional)
      # Possible values: Any SPDX-compliant license identifiers or expressions from https://spdx.org/licenses/
     deny-licenses:
       - LGPL-2.0
       - BSD-2-Clause
   
      # ([String]). Skip these GitHub Advisory Database IDs during detection (optional)
      # Possible values: Any valid GitHub Advisory Database ID from https://github.com/advisories
     allow-ghsas:
       - GHSA-abcd-1234-5679
       - GHSA-efgh-1234-5679
      # ([String]). Block pull requests that introduce vulnerabilities in the scopes that match this list (optional)
      # Possible values: "development", "runtime", "unknown"
     fail-on-scopes:
       - development
       - runtime
   

For further details about the configuration options, see dependency-review-action.

Further reading

• Customizing your dependency review action configuration