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Create Automatically Updating Repo in GitHub

Version 2.4 by chrisby on 2025/04/22 14:30

GitHub Actions

The GitHub actions are used for CI purposes. One job is auto update, which can be enabled as follows:

  • Repo > Settings >
    • General >
      • Pull Requests > enable "Allow auto-merge".
      • Branches > Add classic branch protection rule
        • Branch name pattern: main
        • Enable "Require status checks to pass before merging".
    • Actions > General > Workflow permissions > enable "Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests"
      • If option is greyed out, then probably the project policy is dictated by the repository policy. Simply do this in repository settings then.
  • Copy the workflow file from this project. The key configs are the "permissions" to include "contents: write, pull-requests: write" and the "auto-merge" step.

If you don't need a private module from the same repository, you  must delete the "Authenticate for private modules" job. Otherwise, the following steps are necessary:

  • GitHub > Profile > Settings > Developer Settings > Personal Access Tokens > Tokens (classic) > Generate new token
    • Name: ACTIONS_TOKEN
    • Select scopes: "repo"
    • Copy the token
  • Repo > Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions > New repository secret >
    • Name: MY_TOKEN
      • You need to set "environment: MY_TOKEN" in the workflow file to use its environment secrets
    • Environment Secrets > Add environment secret
      • Name: ACTIONS_TOKEN
      • Value:

Add this to the workflow file:

- name: Authenticate for private modules
        env:
          ACTIONS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.ACTIONS_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          git config --global url."https://${ACTIONS_TOKEN}:x-oauth-basic@github.com/".insteadOf "https://github.com/"
          go env -w GOPRIVATE=github.com/ocelot-cloud/*

This is a sample file how the weekly updates can be conducted via GitHub Actions. Create .github/workflows/weekly-update.yml:

name: Weekly Update

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 2 * * 3'
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  weekly-update:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - uses: ./.github/actions/setup

      - name: Run ci-runner update
        run: |
          go get -u ./...
          go mod tidy
          go build
          # execute the test suite to check whether the updates did not break anything

      - name: Commit and create PR
        id: cpr
        uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v5
        with:
          commit-message: "chore: weekly ci-runner update"
          branch: weekly/ci-update
          title: "Weekly CI Runner Update"
          delete-branch: true
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      - name: Enable Auto-Merge
        if: steps.cpr.outputs.pull-request-operation == 'created'
        uses: peter-evans/enable-pull-request-automerge@v3
        with:
          pull-request-number: ${{ steps.cpr.outputs.pull-request-number }}
          merge-method: squash

Private Go Repository Dependency

If you are developing with Go and need a private repository as a dependency, you need to tell the SDK to use SSH instead of HTTPS to get access.

git config --global url."ssh://git@github.com/".insteadOf "https://github.com/"
go env -w GOPRIVATE=github.com/ocelot-cloud/*