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.

• 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.

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.

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

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.

Below are the allowed configuration options:

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:

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)

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).

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"

---
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>

---
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 }}

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

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

MIT

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.