Evergreen action

This is a GitHub Action that given an organization, team, or specified repositories, opens an issue/PR if dependabot is not enabled, or there are more package ecosystems that could be added. It also enables automated security updates for the repository.

This action was developed by the GitHub OSPO for our own use and developed in a way that we could open source it that it might be useful to you as well! If you want to know more about how we use it, reach out in an issue in this repository.

Example use cases

• As a part of the security team for my company, I want to make sure that all of the repositories in the company organizations are regularly updating their dependencies to ensure they are using the most secure version of the dependency available.
• As an OSPO or maintainer, I want to automate everything I can to keep maintaining my project(s) easy and efficient.

Support

If you need support using this project or have questions about it, please open up an issue in this repository. Requests made directly to GitHub staff or support team will be redirected here to open an issue. GitHub SLA's and support/services contracts do not apply to this repository.

OSPO GitHub Actions as a Whole

All feedback regarding our GitHub Actions, as a whole, should be communicated through issues on our github-ospo repository.

Use as a GitHub Action

1. Create a repository to host this GitHub Action or select an existing repository.

2. Select a best fit workflow file from the examples below.

3. Copy that example into your repository (from step 1) and into the proper directory for GitHub Actions: .github/workflows/ directory with the file extension .yml (ie. .github/workflows/evergreen.yml)

4. Edit the values below from the sample workflow with your information:

   • ORGANIZATION
   • TEAM_NAME
   • REPOSITORY
   • EXEMPT_REPOS
   • TYPE
   • TITLE
   • BODY

   If running on a whole organization then no repository is needed.
   If running the action on just one repository or a list of repositories, then no organization is needed.
   If running the action on a team, then an organization is required and no repository is needed.
   The type should be either issue or pull representing the action that you want taken after discovering a repository that should enable dependabot.

5. Optionally, edit the value CREATED_AFTER_DATE if you are setting up this action to run regularly and only want newly created repositories to be considered. Otherwise, if you want all specified repositories regardless of when they were created to be considered, then leave it blank.

6. Optionally edit the value UPDATE_EXISTING (default value false) if you want to update existing dependabot configuration files. If set to true, the action will update the existing dependabot configuration file with any package ecosystems that are detected but not configured yet. If set to false, the action will only create a new dependabot configuration file if there is not an existing one.

7. Also edit the value for GH_ENTERPRISE_URL if you are using a GitHub Server and not using github.com. For github.com users, leave it empty.

8. Update the value of GH_TOKEN. Do this by creating a GitHub API token with the following permissions:

   • If using classic tokens:
     • workflow, this will set also all permissions for repo
     • under admin, read:org and write:org
   • If using fine grain tokens:
     • Administration - Read and Write (Needed to activate the automated security updates )
     • Pull Requests - Read and Write (If TYPE input is set to pull)
     • Issues - Read and Write (If TYPE input is set to issue)
     • Workflows - Read and Write (Needed to create the dependabot.yml file)

   Then take the value of the API token you just created, and create a repository secret where the name of the secret is GH_TOKEN and the value of the secret the API token. Then finally update the workflow file to use that repository secret by changing GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} to GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}. The name of the secret can really be anything, it just needs to match between when you create the secret name and when you refer to it in the workflow file.

9. If you want the resulting issue with the output to appear in a different repository other than the one the workflow file runs in, update the line token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} with your own GitHub API token stored as a repository secret. This process is the same as described in the step above. More info on creating secrets can be found here.

10. Commit the workflow file to the default branch (often master or main)

11. Wait for the action to trigger based on the schedule entry or manually trigger the workflow as shown in the documentation.

Configuration

Below are the allowed configuration options:

Authentication

This action can be configured to authenticate with GitHub App Installation or Personal Access Token (PAT). If all configuration options are provided, the GitHub App Installation configuration has precedence. You can choose one of the following methods to authenticate:

GitHub App Installation

field	required	default	description
GH_APP_ID	True	""	GitHub Application ID. See documentation for more details.
GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID	True	""	GitHub Application Installation ID. See documentation for more details.
GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY	True	""	GitHub Application Private Key. See documentation for more details.
GITHUB_APP_ENTERPRISE_ONLY	False	false	Set this input to true if your app is created in GHE and communicates with GHE.

The needed GitHub app permissions are the following under Repository permissions:

• Administration - Read and Write (Needed to activate the automated security updates )
• Pull Requests - Read and Write (If TYPE input is set to pull)
• Issues - Read and Write (If TYPE input is set to issue)
• Workflows - Read and Write (Needed to create the dependabot.yml file)
• Contents - Read and Write (Needed to create a commit)

Personal Access Token (PAT)

field	required	default	description
GH_TOKEN	True	""	The GitHub Token used to scan the repository. Must have read access to all the repositories you are interested in scanning, repo:write, and workflow privileges to create a pull request.

Other Configuration Options

field	required	default	description
GH_ENTERPRISE_URL	False	""	The GH_ENTERPRISE_URL is used to connect to an enterprise server instance of GitHub, ex: https://yourgheserver.com. github.com users should not enter anything here.
ORGANIZATION	Required to have ORGANIZATION or REPOSITORY		The name of the GitHub organization which you want this action to work from. ie. github.com/github would be github
REPOSITORY	Required to have ORGANIZATION or REPOSITORY		The name of the repository and organization which you want this action to work from. ie. github/evergreen or a comma separated list of multiple repositories github/evergreen,super-linter/super-linter
EXEMPT_REPOS	False	""	These repositories will be exempt from this action considering them for dependabot enablement. ex: If my org is set to github then I might want to exempt a few of the repos but get the rest by setting EXEMPT_REPOS to github/evergreen,github/contributors
TYPE	False	pull	Type refers to the type of action you want taken if this workflow determines that dependabot could be enabled. Valid values are pull or issue.
TITLE	False	"Enable Dependabot"	The title of the issue or pull request that will be created if dependabot could be enabled.
BODY	False	Pull Request: "Dependabot could be enabled for this repository. Please enable it by merging this pull request so that we can keep our dependencies up to date and secure." Issue: "Please update the repository to include a Dependabot configuration file. This will ensure our dependencies remain updated and secure. Follow the guidelines in creating Dependabot configuration files to set it up properly.Here's an example of the code:"	The body of the issue or pull request that will be created if dependabot could be enabled.
COMMIT_MESSAGE	False	"Create dependabot.yaml"	The commit message for the pull request that will be created if dependabot could be enabled.
CREATED_AFTER_DATE	False	none	If a value is set, this action will only consider repositories created on or after this date for dependabot enablement. This is useful if you want to only consider newly created repositories. If I set up this action to run weekly and I only want to scan for repos created in the last week that need dependabot enabled, then I would set CREATED_AFTER_DATE to 7 days ago. That way only repositories created after 7 days ago will be considered for dependabot enablement. If not set or set to nothing, all repositories will be scanned and a duplicate issue/pull request may occur. Ex: 2023-12-31 for Dec. 31st 2023
UPDATE_EXISTING	False	False	If set to true, this action will update the existing dependabot configuration file with any package ecosystems that are detected but not configured yet. If set to false, the action will only create a new dependabot configuration file if there is not an existing one.
PROJECT_ID	False	""	If set, this will assign the issue or pull request to the project with the given ID. ( The project ID on GitHub can be located by navigating to the respective project and observing the URL's end.) The ORGANIZATION variable is required
DRY_RUN	False	False	If set to true, this action will not create any issues or pull requests. It will only log the repositories that could have dependabot enabled. This is useful for testing.
GROUP_DEPENDENCIES	False	false	If set to true, dependabot configuration will group dependencies updates based on dependency type (production or development, where supported)
FILTER_VISIBILITY	False	"public,private,internal"	Use this flag to filter repositories in scope by their visibility (public, private, internal). By default all repository are targeted. ex: to ignore public repositories set this value to private,internal.
BATCH_SIZE	False	None	Set this to define the maximum amount of eligible repositories for every run. This is useful if you are targeting large organizations and you don't want to flood repositories with pull requests / issues. ex: if you want to target 20 repositories per time, set this to 20.
ENABLE_SECURITY_UPDATES	False	true	If set to true, Evergreen will enable Dependabot security updates on target repositories. Note that the GitHub token needs to have the administration:write permission on every repository in scope to successfully enable security updates.
EXEMPT_ECOSYSTEMS	False	""	A list of package ecosystems to exempt from the generated dependabot configuration. To ignore ecosystems set this to one or more of bundler,cargo, composer, pip, docker, npm, gomod, mix, nuget, maven, github-actions and terraform. ex: if you don't want Dependabot to update Dockerfiles and Github Actions you can set this to docker,github-actions.
REPO_SPECIFIC_EXEMPTIONS	False	""	A list of repositories that should be exempt from specific package ecosystems similar to EXEMPT_ECOSYSTEMS but those apply to all repositories. ex: org1/repo1:docker,github-actions;org1/repo2:pip would set exempt_ecosystems for org1/repo1 to be ['docker', 'github-actions'], and for org1/repo2 it would be ['pip'], while for every other repository evaluated, it would be set by the env variable EXEMPT_ECOSYSTEMS. NOTE: If you want specific exemptions to be added on top of the already specified global exemptions, you need to add the global exemptions to each repo specific exemption.
SCHEDULE	False	weekly	Schedule interval by which to check for dependency updates via Dependabot. Allowed values are daily, weekly, or monthly
SCHEDULE_DAY	False	''	Scheduled day by which to check for dependency updates via Dependabot. Allowed values are days of the week full names (i.e., monday)
LABELS	False	""	A comma separated list of labels that should be added to pull requests opened by dependabot.
DEPENDABOT_CONFIG_FILE	False	""	Location of the configuration file for dependabot.yml configurations. If the file is present locally it takes precedence over the one in the repository.

Private repositories configuration

Dependabot allows the configuration of private registries for dependabot to use.
To add a private registry configuration to the dependabot file the DEPENDABOT_CONFIG_FILE needs to be set with the path of the configuration file.

This configuration file needs to exist on the repository where the action runs. It can also be created locally to test some configurations (if created locally it takes precedence over the file on the repository).

Usage

Set the input variable:

DEPENDABOT_CONFIG_FILE = "dependabot-config.yaml"

Create a file on your repository in the same path:

npm:
  type: "npm"
  url: "https://yourprivateregistry/npm/"
  username: "${{secrets.username}}"
  password: "${{secrets.password}}"
  key: <used if necessary>
  token: <used if necessary>
  replaces-base: <used if necessary>
maven:
  type: "maven"
  url: "https://yourprivateregistry/maven/"
  username: "${{secrets.username}}"
  password: "${{secrets.password}}"

The principal key of each configuration need to match the package managers that the script is looking for.

The dependabot.yaml created file will look like the following with the registries: key added:

updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    registries: --> added configuration
      - 'npm'    --> added configuration
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    labels:
      - "test"
      - "dependabot"
      - "new"

Example workflows

Basic

---
name: Weekly dependabot checks
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 * * 6"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  evergreen:
    name: evergreen
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - name: Run evergreen action
        uses: github/evergreen@v1
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>

Advanced

---
name: Weekly dependabot checks
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 * * 6"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  evergreen:
    name: evergreen
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - shell: bash
        run: |
          # Get the current date
          current_date=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d')

          # Calculate the previous month
          previous_date=$(date -d "$current_date -7 day" +'%Y-%m-%d')

          echo "$previous_date..$current_date"
          echo "one_week_ago=$previous_date" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"

      - name: Run evergreen action
        uses: github/evergreen@v1
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>
          EXEMPT_REPOS: "org_name/repo_name_1, org_name/repo_name_2"
          TITLE: "Add dependabot configuration"
          BODY: "Please add this dependabot configuration so that we can keep the dependencies in this repo up to date and secure. for help, contact XXX"
          CREATED_AFTER_DATE: ${{ env.one_week_ago }}

Using GitHub app

name: Evergreen
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 * * 6"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  evergreen:
    name: "Create dependabot.yml"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Run evergreen action for tools
        uses: github/evergreen@v1
        env:
          GH_APP_ID: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_ID }}
          GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID }}
          GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY }}
          # GITHUB_APP_ENTERPRISE_ONLY: True --> Set to true when created GHE App needs to communicate with GHE api
          GH_ENTERPRISE_URL: ${{ github.server_url }}
          # GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} --> the token input is not used if the github app inputs are set
          ORGANIZATION: your_organization
          UPDATE_EXISTING: True
          GROUP_DEPENDENCIES: True

Local usage without Docker

1. Make sure you have at least Python3.11 installed
2. Copy .env-example to .env
3. Fill out the .env file with a token from a user that has access to the organization to scan (listed below). Tokens should have at least write:org access for organization scanning and write:repository for repository scanning.
4. Fill out the .env file with the configuration parameters you want to use
5. pip3 install -r requirements.txt
6. Run python3 ./evergreen.py, which will output everything in the terminal

License

MIT

More OSPO Tools

Looking for more resources for your open source program office (OSPO)? Check out the github-ospo repo for a variety of tools designed to support your needs.