A very basic example of how to use the action. This will run the action with the default configuration.
The full list of configuration options can be found here.
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
The following example will fail the action if any vulnerabilities are found with a severity of medium or higher; and if any packages are found with an incompatible license - in this case, the LGPL-2.0 and BSD-2-Clause licenses.
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
fail-on-severity: critical
deny-licenses: LGPL-2.0, BSD-2-Clause
The following example will use a configuration file to configure the action. This is useful if you want to keep your configuration in a single place and makes it easier to manage as the configuration grows.
The configuration file can be located in the same repository or in a separate repository. Having it in a separate repository might be useful if you plan to use the same configuration across multiple repositories and control it centrally.
In this example, the configuration file is located in the same repository under .github/dependency-review-config.yml
. The following configuration will fail the action if any vulnerabilities are found with a severity of critical; and if any packages are found with an incompatible license - in this case, the LGPL-2.0 and BSD-2-Clause licenses.
fail_on_severity: 'critical'
allow_licenses:
- 'LGPL-2.0'
- 'BSD-2-Clause'
The Dependency Review Action workflow file will then look like this:
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
config-file: './.github/dependency-review-config.yml'
The following example will use a configuration file from an external public GitHub repository to configure the action.
Let's say that the configuration file is located in github/octorepo/dependency-review-config.yml@main
The Dependancy Review Action workflow file will then look like this:
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
config-file: 'github/octorepo/dependency-review-config.yml@main'
The following example will use a configuration file from an external private GtiHub repository to configure the action.
Let's say that the configuration file is located in github/octorepo-private/dependency-review-config.yml@main
The Dependancy Review Action workflow file will then look like this:
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
config-file: 'github/octorepo-private/dependency-review-config.yml@main'
external-repo-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # or a personal access token
Using the comment-summary-in-pr
you can get the results of the action in the PR as a comment. In order for this to work, the action needs to be able to create a comment in the PR. This requires additional pull-requests: write
permission.
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
fail-on-severity: critical
deny-licenses: LGPL-2.0, BSD-2-Clause
comment-summary-in-pr: always
comment-content
contains the output of the results comment for the entire run.dependency-changes
,vulnerable-changes
,invalid-license-changes
anddenied-changes
are all JSON objects that allow you to access individual sets of changes.
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
id: review
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
fail-on-severity: critical
deny-licenses: LGPL-2.0, BSD-2-Clause
- name: 'Report'
# make sure this step runs even if the previous failed
if: ${{ failure() && steps.review.conclusion == 'failure' }}
shell: bash
env: # store comment HTML data in an environment variable
COMMENT: ${{ steps.review.outputs.comment-content }}
run: | # do something with the comment:
echo "$COMMENT"
- name: 'List vulnerable dependencies'
# make sure this step runs even if the previous failed
if: ${{ failure() && steps.review.conclusion == 'failure' }}
shell: bash
env: # store JSON data in an environment variable
VULNERABLE_CHANGES: ${{ steps.review.outputs.vulnerable-changes }}
run: | # do something with the JSON:
echo "$VULNERABLE_CHANGES" | jq '.[].package_url'
Using the allow-dependencies-licenses
you can exclude dependencies from the license check. The values should be provided in purl format.
In this example, we are excluding lodash
from npm
and requests
from pip
dependencies from the license check
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
fail-on-severity: critical
deny-licenses: LGPL-2.0, BSD-2-Clause
comment-summary-in-pr: always
allow-dependencies-licenses: 'pkg:npm/loadash, pkg:pypi/requests'
If we were to use configuration file, the configuration would look like this:
fail-on-severity: 'critical'
allow-licenses:
- 'LGPL-2.0'
- 'BSD-2-Clause'
allow-dependencies-licenses:
- 'pkg:npm/loadash'
- 'pkg:pypi/requests'
To only do the vulnerability check you can use the license-check
to disable the license compatibility check (which is done by default).
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
fail-on-severity: critical
comment-summary-in-pr: always
license-check: false
With the deny-packages
option, you can exclude dependencies based on their PURL (Package URL). If a specific version is provided, the action will deny packages matching that version. When no version is specified, the action treats it as a wildcard, denying all matching packages regardless of version. Multiple values can be added, separated by commas.
Using the deny-groups
option you can exclude dependencies by their group name/namespace. You can add multiple values separated by a comma.
In this example, we are excluding all versions of pkg:maven/org.apache.logging.log4j:log4j-api
and only 2.23.0
of log4j-core pkg:maven/org.apache.logging.log4j/[email protected]
from maven
and all packages in the group pkg:maven/com.bazaarvoice.maven/
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
deny-packages: 'pkg:maven/org.apache.logging.log4j/log4j-api,pkg:maven/org.apache.logging.log4j/[email protected]'
deny-groups: 'pkg:maven/com.bazaarvoice.jolt/'
When possible, this action will include dependencies submitted through the dependency submission API. In this case, it's important for the action not to complete until all of the relevant dependencies have been submitted for both the base and head commits.
When this action runs before one or more of the dependency submission actions, there will be an unequal number of dependency
snapshots between the base and head commits. For example, there may be one snapshot available for the tip of main
and none
for the PR branch. In that case, the API response will contain a "snapshot warning" explaining the discrepancy.
In this example, when the action encounters one of these warnings it will retry every 10 seconds after that for 60 seconds or until there is no warning in the response.
name: 'Dependency Review'
on: [pull_request]
permissions:
contents: read
pull-requests: write
jobs:
dependency-review:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Checkout Repository'
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: 'Dependency Review'
uses: actions/dependency-review-action@v4
with:
retry-on-snapshot-warnings: true
retry-on-snapshot-warnings-timeout: 60