saadmk11 / saadmk11/github-actions-version-updater

Feature Request: be able to scan actions defined within a composite actions

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Dominant language
Python
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103
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Since composite actions are a alternative method to make the workflows more reusable, i think it would be good to add a way to check if the actions defined within have a new version.

Today, a composite action can be defined in two ways:

  • In a public repository
    Then, can be used in a workflow like another Github Action in the marketplace (ex: uses: actions/checkout@v3). For this case, the version updater will work without problems.

  • In a private repository
    For this case, you need to checkout the repo that contains the composite action using a PAT token. Then in the step, the action need be specified specified without the version (@x.x.x). The version of the composite action is determined by the ref input of the checkouted step of the composite action repo.


The problem is, in both cases, there is no way to check the versions of the actions used in the composite actions. Our projects uses a lot of these composite actions in the workflows. We used this approach because Github Actions does not support using reusable workflows from private repositores, only composite actions. There is a way to add this feature? Maybe scan the composite action file, instead of the workflow itself...

Thanks in advance.

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the existing workflow-scanning and version-updater paths, then inspect how composite action files and checkout steps with a ref are represented. Done means actions nested in both public and private composite actions can be discovered and checked for newer versions.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
github-actions, python
Domain
ci-cd, devops
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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