About GitHub Packages with GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions help you automate your software development workflows in the same place you store code and collaborate on pull requests and issues. You can write individual tasks, called actions, and combine them to create a custom workflow. With GitHub Actions you can build end-to-end continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) capabilities directly in your repository. For more information, see "About GitHub Actions."
You can extend the CI and CD capabilities of your repository by publishing or installing packages as part of your workflow.
Authenticating to GitHub Container Registry
Note: GitHub Container Registry is currently in public beta and subject to change. During the beta, storage and bandwidth are free. To use GitHub Container Registry, you must enable the feature preview. For more information, see "About GitHub Container Registry" and "Enabling improved container support."
If you want to authenticate to GitHub Container Registry in a GitHub Actions workflow, then you must use a personal access token (PAT). The GITHUB_TOKEN
does not currently have the required permissions. During the GitHub Container Registry beta, the only supported form of authentication is the PAT.
PATs can grant broad access to your account. We recommend selecting only the necessary read, write, or delete package
scope when creating a PAT to authenticate to the container registry. Avoid including the repo
scope in a PAT used by a GitHub Actions workflow because it gives unnecessary additional access.
If you'd like to use the container registry in actions during the beta, follow our security best practices for PAT use at "Security hardening for GitHub Actions."
For an authentication example, see "Authenticating with the container registry."
Authenticating to package registries on GitHub
If you want your workflow to authenticate to GitHub Packages to access a package registry other than the container registry on GitHub, then we recommend using the GITHUB_TOKEN
that GitHub automatically creates for your repository when you enable GitHub Actions instead of a personal access token for authentication. The GITHUB_TOKEN
has read:packages
and write:packages
scopes to the current repository. For forks, the token also has the read:packages
scope for the parent repository.
You can reference the GITHUB_TOKEN
in your workflow file using the {{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
context. For more information, see "Authenticating with the GITHUB_TOKEN."
Publishing a package using an action
You can use GitHub Actions to automatically publish packages as part of your continuous integration (CI) flow. This approach to continuous deployment (CD) allows you to automate the creation of new package versions, if the code meets your quality standards. For example, you could create a workflow that runs CI tests every time a developer pushes code to a particular branch. If the tests pass, the workflow can publish a new package version to GitHub Packages.
Configuration steps vary by package client. For general information about configuring a workflow for GitHub Actions, see "Configuring a workflow."
The following example demonstrates how you can use GitHub Actions to build and test your app, and then automatically create a Docker image and publish it to GitHub Packages:
-
Create a new workflow file in your repository (such as
.github/workflows/deploy-image.yml
), and add the following YAML:name: Create and publish a package on: push: branches: ['release'] jobs: run-npm-build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v2 - name: npm install and build webpack run: | npm install npm run build - uses: actions/upload-artifact@main with: name: webpack artifacts path: public/ run-npm-test: runs-on: ubuntu-latest needs: run-npm-build strategy: matrix: os: [ubuntu-latest] node-version: [12.x, 14.x] steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v2 - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }} uses: actions/setup-node@v1 with: node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }} - uses: actions/download-artifact@main with: name: webpack artifacts path: public - name: npm install, and test run: | npm install npm test env: CI: true build-and-push-image: runs-on: ubuntu-latest needs: run-npm-test steps: - name: Checkout uses: actions/checkout@v2 - name: Build container image uses: docker/build-push-action@v1 with: username: ${{ github.actor }} password: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} registry: docker.pkg.github.com repository: ${{ github.repository }}/octo-image tag_with_sha: true tag_with_ref: true
The relevant settings are explained in the following table:
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Configures the Create and publish a package workflow to run every time a change is pushed to the branch called release .
|
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This job installs NPM and uses it to build the app. |
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This job uses npm test to test the code. The needs: run-npm-build command makes this job dependent on the run-npm-build job.
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Creates a new step called Build container image . This step runs as part of the build-and-push-image job. The needs: run-npm-test command makes this job dependent on the run-npm-test job.
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Uses the Docker build-push-action action to build the image, based on your repository's Dockerfile . If the build succeeds, it pushes the image to GitHub Packages.
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Sends the required parameters to the build-push-action action. This are defined in the subsequent lines.
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Defines the user account that will publish the packages. Once published, the packages are owned by the account defined here. |
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Defines the password that is used to access GitHub Packages. |
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Defines the registry that will host the resulting packages. This example uses GitHub Packages. |
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Defines which repository will host the resulting package, and sets the name of the published package. Replace octo-image with the name you want for your package.
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Tags the published package with the first seven characters of the commit's SHA. For example, sha-2f2d842 .
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Tags the published package with the git ref. This can be the name of the branch used to create the package. |
- This new workflow will run automatically every time you push a change to the repository. You can view the progress in the Actions tab.
- A few minutes after the workflow has completed, the new package will visible in your repository. To find your available packages, see "Viewing a repository's packages."
Installing a package using an action
You can install packages as part of your CI flow using GitHub Actions. For example, you could configure a workflow so that anytime a developer pushes code to a pull request, the workflow resolves dependencies by downloading and installing packages hosted by GitHub Packages. Then, the workflow can run CI tests that require the dependencies.
Installing packages hosted by GitHub Packages through GitHub Actions requires minimal configuration or additional authentication when you use GITHUB_TOKEN
. Data transfer is also free when an action installs a package. For more information, see "About billing for GitHub Packages."
GITHUB_TOKEN
cannot install packages from any private repository besides the repository where the action runs. You cannot currently use GITHUB_TOKEN
to authenticate to GitHub Container Registry.
Configuration steps vary by package client. For general information about configuring a workflow for GitHub Actions, see "Configuring a workflow."