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GitHub Actions Integration

Overview​

Integrations with the GitHub Actions environment are available in several forms. The primary method is through the phylum-dev/phylum-analyze-pr-action action. This action is available in the GitHub Actions Marketplace. Full documentation can be found there or by viewing the Phylum Analyze PR action repository directly.

Alternatives​

The Phylum Analyze PR action is a Docker container action. The default phylum-ci Docker image it uses contains git and the installed phylum Python package. It also contains an installed version of the Phylum CLI and all required tools needed for lockfile generation. An advantage of using the default Docker image is that the complete environment is packaged and made available with components that are known to work together.

One disadvantage to the default image is it's size. It can take a while to download and may provide more tools than required for your specific use case. Special slim tags of the phylum-ci image are provided as an alternative. These tags differ from the default image in that they do not contain the required tools needed for lockfile generation (with the exception of the pip tool). The slim tags are significantly smaller and allow for faster action run times. They are useful for those instances where no manifest files are present and/or only lockfiles are used.

Using the slim image tags is possible by altering your workflow to use the image directly instead of this GitHub Action. That is possible with either container jobs or container steps.

Container Jobs​

GitHub Actions allows for workflows to run a job within a container, using the container: statement in the workflow file. These are known as container jobs. More information can be found in GitHub documentation: "Running jobs in a container". To use a slim tag in a container job, use this minimal configuration:

name: Phylum_analyze
on: pull_request
jobs:
  analyze_deps:
    name: Analyze dependencies with Phylum
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pull-requests: write
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: docker://ghcr.io/phylum-dev/phylum-ci:slim
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
        PHYLUM_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.PHYLUM_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - name: Checkout the repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Analyze dependencies
        run: phylum-ci -vv

The image: value is set to the latest slim image, but other tags are available to ensure a specific release of the phylum-ci project and a specific version of the Phylum CLI. The full list of available phylum-ci image tags can be viewed on GitHub Container Registry (preferred) or Docker Hub.

The GITHUB_TOKEN and PHYLUM_API_KEY environment variables are required to have those exact names. Those environment variables and the rest of the options are more fully documented in the Phylum Analyze PR action repository.

Container Steps​

GitHub Actions allows for workflows to run a step within a container, by specifying that container image in the uses: statement of the workflow step. These are known as container steps. More information can be found in GitHub workflow syntax documentation. To use a slim tag in a container step, use this minimal configuration:

name: Phylum_analyze
on: pull_request
jobs:
  analyze_deps:
    name: Analyze dependencies with Phylum
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pull-requests: write
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout the repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Analyze dependencies
        uses: docker://ghcr.io/phylum-dev/phylum-ci:slim
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
          PHYLUM_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.PHYLUM_TOKEN }}
        with:
          args: phylum-ci -vv

The uses: value is set to the latest slim image, but other tags are available to ensure a specific release of the phylum-ci project and a specific version of the Phylum CLI. The full list of available phylum-ci image tags can be viewed on GitHub Container Registry (preferred) or Docker Hub.

The GITHUB_TOKEN and PHYLUM_API_KEY environment variables are required to have those exact names. Those environment variables and the rest of the options are more fully documented in the Phylum Analyze PR action repository.

Direct phylum Python Package Use​

It is also possible to make direct use of the phylum Python package within CI. This may be necessary if the Docker image is unavailable or undesirable for some reason. To use the phylum package, install it and call the desired entry points from a script under your control. See the Installation and Usage sections of the README file for more detail.