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This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-03-15. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

About dependency review

In this article

Dependency review lets you catch insecure dependencies before you introduce them to your environment, and provides information on license, dependents, and age of dependencies.

Dependency review is available for organization-owned repositories in GitHub Enterprise Server. This feature requires a license for GitHub Advanced Security. For more information, see "About GitHub Advanced Security."

About dependency review

Dependency review helps you understand dependency changes and the security impact of these changes at every pull request. It provides an easily understandable visualization of dependency changes with a rich diff on the "Files Changed" tab of a pull request. Dependency review informs you of:

  • Which dependencies were added, removed, or updated, along with the release dates.
  • How many projects use these components.
  • Vulnerability data for these dependencies.

If a pull request targets your repository's default branch and contains changes to package manifests or lock files, you can display a dependency review to see what has changed. The dependency review includes details of changes to indirect dependencies in lock files, and it tells you if any of the added or updated dependencies contain known vulnerabilities.

Sometimes you might just want to update the version of one dependency in a manifest and generate a pull request. However, if the updated version of this direct dependency also has updated dependencies, your pull request may have more changes than you expected. The dependency review for each manifest and lock file provides an easy way to see what has changed, and whether any of the new dependency versions contain known vulnerabilities.

By checking the dependency reviews in a pull request, and changing any dependencies that are flagged as vulnerable, you can avoid vulnerabilities being added to your project. For more information about how dependency review works, see "Reviewing dependency changes in a pull request."

For more information about configuring dependency review, see "Configuring dependency review."

Dependabot alerts will find vulnerabilities that are already in your dependencies, but it's much better to avoid introducing potential problems than to fix problems at a later date. For more information about Dependabot alerts, see "About Dependabot alerts."

Dependency review supports the same languages and package management ecosystems as the dependency graph. For more information, see "About the dependency graph."

For more information on supply chain features available on GitHub Enterprise Server, see "About supply chain security."

Enabling dependency review

The dependency review feature becomes available when you enable the dependency graph. For more information, see "Enabling the dependency graph for your enterprise."