Running CodeQL code scanning in a container

About code scanning with a containerized build

If you're setting up code scanning for a compiled language, and you're building the code in a containerized environment, the analysis may fail with the error message "No source code was seen during the build." This indicates that CodeQL was unable to monitor your code as it was compiled.

You must run CodeQL in the same container in which you build your code. This applies whether you are using the CodeQL runner, or GitHub Actions. If you're using the CodeQL runner, run it in the container where your code builds. For more information about the CodeQL runner, see "Running CodeQL code scanning in your CI system." If you're using GitHub Actions, configure your workflow to run all the actions in the same container. For more information, see "Example workflow."

Dependencies

You may have difficulty running code scanning if the container you're using is missing certain dependencies (for example, Git must be installed and added to the PATH variable). If you encounter dependency issues, review the list of software typically included on GitHub's virtual environments. For more information, see the version-specific readme files in these locations:

• Linux: https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/tree/main/images/linux
• macOS: https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/tree/main/images/macos
• Windows: https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/tree/main/images/win

Example workflow

This sample workflow uses GitHub Actions to run CodeQL analysis in a containerized environment. The value of container.image identifies the container to use. In this example the image is named codeql-container, with a tag of f0f91db. For more information, see "Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions."

name: "CodeQL"

on: 
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]
  schedule:
    - cron: '45 15 * * 2'

jobs:
  analyze:
    name: Analyze
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        language: [java]

    # Specify the container in which actions will run
    container:
      image: codeql-container:f0f91db

    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Initialize CodeQL
        uses: github/codeql-action/init@v1
        with:
          languages: ${{ matrix.language }}
      - name: Build
        run: |
          ./configure
          make
      - name: Perform CodeQL Analysis
        uses: github/codeql-action/analyze@v1