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Accessing private repositories from GitHub Actions

This feature is currently experimental and only applies to moj-analytical-services

There are use cases where projects need to consume other private projects in GitHub Actions. Traditionally, this has meant project teams must generate deploy keys or personal access tokens (PAT). However, this adds the overhead of managing these secrets.

The Analytical Platform team has installed Octo STS to alleviate the requirement for deploy keys or personal access tokens.

To make use of this, you will need to do the following:

  1. Create an Octo STS definition in the repository you want to consume

    .github/chainguard/${IDENTITY}.sts.yaml where ${IDENTITY} is a reference to your repository, e.g. .github/chainguard/airflow-create-a-pipeline.sts.yaml

    This example gives all workflow on all branches access to read contents.

    ---
issuer: https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com
subject: repo:moj-analytical-services/airflow-create-a-pipeline:.*

permissions:
  contents: read

  2. Retrieve the token in repository you consuming the private repository from

    - name: Obtain Octo STS Token
  uses: octo-sts/action@6177b4481c00308b3839969c3eca88c96a91775f # v1.0.0
  id: octo_sts
  with:
    scope: moj-analytical-services/private-repository # Reference to repository you you want to consume
    identity: airflow-create-a-pipeline               # Reference to ${IDENTITY}

  3. You can then use the output token to clone the repository

    - name: Checkout moj-analytical-services/private-repository
  id: checkout_private_repo
  uses: actions/checkout@692973e3d937129bcbf40652eb9f2f61becf3332 # v4.1.7
  with:
    token: ${{ steps.octo_sts.outputs.token }}
    repository: moj-analytical-services/private-repository
    path: private-repository
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