Note: Your site administrator must set up Dependabot updates for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance before you can use this feature. For more information, see "Enabling Dependabot for your enterprise."
About Dependabot and GitHub Actions
Dependabot creates pull requests to keep your dependencies up to date, and you can use GitHub Actions to perform automated tasks when these pull requests are created. For example, fetch additional artifacts, add labels, run tests, or otherwise modifying the pull request.
Responding to events
Dependabot is able to trigger GitHub Actions workflows on its pull requests and comments; however, certain events are treated differently.
For workflows initiated by Dependabot (github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]'
) using the pull_request
, pull_request_review
, pull_request_review_comment
, push
, create
, deployment
, and deployment_status
events, the following restrictions apply:
GITHUB_TOKEN
has read-only permissions by default.- Secrets are populated from Dependabot secrets. GitHub Actions secrets are not available.
For workflows initiated by Dependabot (github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]'
) using the pull_request_target
event, if the base ref of the pull request was created by Dependabot (github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]'
), the GITHUB_TOKEN
will be read-only and secrets are not available.
These restrictions apply even if the workflow is re-run by a different actor.
For more information, see "Keeping your GitHub Actions and workflows secure: Preventing pwn requests."
Changing GITHUB_TOKEN
permissions
By default, GitHub Actions workflows triggered by Dependabot get a GITHUB_TOKEN
with read-only permissions. You can use the permissions
key in your workflow to increase the access for the token:
name: CI
on: pull_request
# Set the access for individual scopes, or use permissions: write-all
permissions:
pull-requests: write
issues: write
repository-projects: write
...
jobs:
...
For more information, see "Automatic token authentication."
Accessing secrets
When a Dependabot event triggers a workflow, the only secrets available to the workflow are Dependabot secrets. GitHub Actions secrets are not available. Consequently, you must store any secrets that are used by a workflow triggered by Dependabot events as Dependabot secrets. For more information, see "Configuring access to private registries for Dependabot."
Dependabot secrets are added to the secrets
context and referenced using exactly the same syntax as secrets for GitHub Actions. For more information, see "Using secrets in GitHub Actions."
If you have a workflow that will be triggered by Dependabot and also by other actors, the simplest solution is to store the token with the permissions required in an action and in a Dependabot secret with identical names. Then the workflow can include a single call to these secrets. If the secret for Dependabot has a different name, use conditions to specify the correct secrets for different actors to use. For examples that use conditions, see "Common automations" below.
To access a private container registry on AWS with a user name and password, a workflow must include a secret for username
and password
. In the example below, when Dependabot triggers the workflow, the Dependabot secrets with the names READONLY_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
and READONLY_AWS_ACCESS_KEY
are used. If another actor triggers the workflow, the actions secrets with those names are used.
name: CI
on:
pull_request:
branches: [ main ]
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout repository
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Login to private container registry for dependencies
uses: docker/login-action@v2
with:
registry: https://1234567890.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
username: ${{ secrets.READONLY_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
password: ${{ secrets.READONLY_AWS_ACCESS_KEY }}
- name: Build the Docker image
run: docker build . --file Dockerfile --tag my-image-name:$(date +%s)
Manually re-running a workflow
When you manually re-run a Dependabot workflow, it will run with the same privileges as before even if the user who initiated the rerun has different privileges. For more information, see "Re-running workflows and jobs."
Common Dependabot automations
Here are several common scenarios that can be automated using GitHub Actions.
Fetch metadata about a pull request
A large amount of automation requires knowing information about the contents of the pull request: what the dependency name was, if it's a production dependency, and if it's a major, minor, or patch update.
The dependabot/fetch-metadata
action provides all that information for you:
name: Dependabot fetch metadata
on: pull_request
permissions:
pull-requests: write
issues: write
repository-projects: write
jobs:
dependabot:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]'
steps:
- name: Dependabot metadata
id: metadata
uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v1
with:
github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
# The following properties are now available:
# - steps.metadata.outputs.dependency-names
# - steps.metadata.outputs.dependency-type
# - steps.metadata.outputs.update-type
For more information, see the dependabot/fetch-metadata
repository.
Label a pull request
If you have other automation or triage workflows based on GitHub labels, you can configure an action to assign labels based on the metadata provided.
For example, if you want to flag all production dependency updates with a label:
name: Dependabot auto-label
on: pull_request
permissions:
pull-requests: write
issues: write
repository-projects: write
jobs:
dependabot:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]'
steps:
- name: Dependabot metadata
id: metadata
uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v1
with:
github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
- name: Add a label for all production dependencies
if: steps.metadata.outputs.dependency-type == 'direct:production'
run: gh pr edit "$PR_URL" --add-label "production"
env:
PR_URL: ${{github.event.pull_request.html_url}}
Approve a pull request
If you want to automatically approve Dependabot pull requests, you can use the GitHub CLI in a workflow:
name: Dependabot auto-approve
on: pull_request
permissions:
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependabot:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]'
steps:
- name: Dependabot metadata
id: metadata
uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v1
with:
github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
- name: Approve a PR
run: gh pr review --approve "$PR_URL"
env:
PR_URL: ${{github.event.pull_request.html_url}}
GH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
Enable auto-merge on a pull request
If you want to allow maintainers to mark certain pull requests for auto-merge, you can use GitHub's auto-merge functionality. This enables the pull request to be merged when any tests and approvals required by the branch protection rules are successfully met. For more information, see "Automatically merging a pull request" and "Managing a branch protection rule."
Note: If you use status checks to test pull requests, you should enable Require status checks to pass before merging for the target branch for Dependabot pull requests. This branch protection rule ensures that pull requests are not merged unless all the required status checks pass. For more information, see "Managing a branch protection rule."
You can instead use GitHub Actions and the GitHub CLI. Here is an example that auto merges all patch updates to my-dependency
:
name: Dependabot auto-merge
on: pull_request
permissions:
contents: write
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependabot:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]'
steps:
- name: Dependabot metadata
id: metadata
uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@v1
with:
github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
- name: Enable auto-merge for Dependabot PRs
if: contains(steps.metadata.outputs.dependency-names, 'my-dependency') && steps.metadata.outputs.update-type == 'version-update:semver-patch'
run: gh pr merge --auto --merge "$PR_URL"
env:
PR_URL: ${{github.event.pull_request.html_url}}
GH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
Troubleshooting failed workflow runs
If your workflow run fails, check the following:
- You are running the workflow only when the correct actor triggers it.
- You are checking out the correct
ref
for yourpull_request
. - Your secrets are available in Dependabot secrets rather than as GitHub Actions secrets.
- You have a
GITHUB_TOKEN
with the correct permissions.
For information on writing and debugging GitHub Actions, see "Learn GitHub Actions."