GitHub

The GitHub driver supports sources, triggers, and reporters. It can interact with the public GitHub service as well as site-local installations of GitHub enterprise.

Configure GitHub

There are two options currently available. GitHub’s project owner can either manually setup web-hook or install a GitHub Application. In the first case, the project’s owner needs to know the zuul endpoint and the webhook secrets.

Web-Hook

To configure a project’s webhook events:

Set Payload URL to http://<zuul-hostname>:<port>/api/connection/<connection-name>/payload.
Set Content Type to application/json.

Select Events you are interested in. See below for the supported events.

You will also need to have a GitHub user created for your zuul:

Zuul public key needs to be added to the GitHub account
A api_token needs to be created too, see this article

Then in the zuul.conf, set webhook_token and api_token.

Application

To create a GitHub application:

Go to your organization settings page to create the application, e.g.: https://github.com/organizations/my-org/settings/apps/new
Set GitHub App name to “my-org-zuul”
Set Setup URL to your setup documentation, when user install the application they are redirected to this url
Set Webhook URL to http://<zuul-hostname>:<port>/api/connection/<connection-name>/payload.
Create a Webhook secret
Set permissions:
- Repository administration: Read
- Checks: Read & Write
- Repository contents: Read & Write (write to let zuul merge change)
- Issues: Read & Write
- Pull requests: Read & Write
- Commit statuses: Read & Write
Set events subscription:
- Check run
- Commit comment
- Create
- Push
- Release
- Issue comment
- Issues
- Label
- Pull request
- Pull request review
- Pull request review comment
- Status
Set Where can this GitHub App be installed to “Any account”
Create the App
Generate a Private key in the app settings page

Then in the zuul.conf, set webhook_token, app_id and app_key. After restarting zuul-scheduler, verify in the ‘Advanced’ tab that the Ping payload works (green tick and 200 response)

Users can now install the application using its public page, e.g.: https://github.com/apps/my-org-zuul

Note

GitHub Pull Requests that modify GitHub Actions workflow configuration files cannot be merged by application credentials (this is any Pull Request that edits the .github/workflows directory and its contents). These Pull Requests must be merged by a normal user account. This means that Zuul will be limited to posting test results and cannot merge these PRs automatically when they pass testing.

GitHub Actions are still in Beta and this behavior may change.

Connection Configuration

There are two forms of operation. Either the Zuul installation can be configured as a Github App or it can be configured as a Webhook.

If the Github App approach is taken, the config settings app_id and app_key are required. If the Webhook approach is taken, the api_token setting is required.

The supported options in zuul.conf connections are:

<github connection>

<github connection>.driver (required)

github: The connection must set driver=github for GitHub connections.

<github connection>.app_id: App ID if you are using a GitHub App. Can be found under the Public Link on the right hand side labeled ID.

<github connection>.app_key: Path to a file containing the secret key Zuul will use to create tokens for the API interactions. In Github this is known as Private key and must be collected when generated.

<github connection>.api_token: API token for accessing GitHub if Zuul is configured with Webhooks. See Creating an access token for command-line use.

<github connection>.webhook_token: Required token for validating the webhook event payloads. In the GitHub App Configuration page, this is called Webhook secret. See Securing your webhooks.

<github connection>.sshkey Default: ~/.ssh/id_rsa: Path to SSH key to use when cloning github repositories if Zuul is configured with Webhooks.

<github connection>.server Default: github.com: Hostname of the github install (such as a GitHub Enterprise).

<github connection>.canonical_hostname: The canonical hostname associated with the git repos on the GitHub server. Defaults to the value of <github connection>.server. This is used to identify projects from this connection by name and in preparing repos on the filesystem for use by jobs. Note that Zuul will still only communicate with the GitHub server identified by server; this option is useful if users customarily use a different hostname to clone or pull git repos so that when Zuul places them in the job’s working directory, they appear under this directory name.

<github connection>.verify_ssl Default: true: Enable or disable ssl verification for GitHub Enterprise. This is useful for a connection to a test installation.

<github connection>.rate_limit_logging Default: true: Enable or disable GitHub rate limit logging. If rate limiting is disabled in GitHub Enterprise this can save some network round trip times.

Trigger Configuration

GitHub webhook events can be configured as triggers.

A connection name with the GitHub driver can take multiple events with the following options.

pipeline.trigger.<github source>

The dictionary passed to the GitHub pipeline trigger attribute supports the following attributes:

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.event (required)

The event from github. Supported events are:

pull_request

pull_request_review

push

check_run

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.action

A pull_request event will have associated action(s) to trigger from. The supported actions are:

opened: Pull request opened.

changed: Pull request synchronized.

closed: Pull request closed.

reopened: Pull request reopened.

comment: Comment added to pull request.

labeled: Label added to pull request.

unlabeled: Label removed from pull request.

status: Status set on commit. The syntax is user:status:value. This also can be a regular expression.

A pull_request_review event will have associated action(s) to trigger from. The supported actions are:

submitted: Pull request review added.

dismissed: Pull request review removed.

A check_run event will have associated action(s) to trigger from. The supported actions are:

requested: A check run is requested.

completed: A check run completed.

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.branch: The branch associated with the event. Example: master. This field is treated as a regular expression, and multiple branches may be listed. Used for pull_request and pull_request_review events.

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.comment: This is only used for pull_request comment actions. It accepts a list of regexes that are searched for in the comment string. If any of these regexes matches a portion of the comment string the trigger is matched. comment: retrigger will match when comments containing ‘retrigger’ somewhere in the comment text are added to a pull request.

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.label: This is only used for labeled and unlabeled pull_request actions. It accepts a list of strings each of which matches the label name in the event literally. label: recheck will match a labeled action when pull request is labeled with a recheck label. label: 'do not test' will match a unlabeled action when a label with name do not test is removed from the pull request.

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.state: This is only used for pull_request_review events. It accepts a list of strings each of which is matched to the review state, which can be one of approved, comment, or request_changes.

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.status: This is used for pull-request and status actions. It accepts a list of strings each of which matches the user setting the status, the status context, and the status itself in the format of user:context:status. For example, zuul_github_ci_bot:check_pipeline:success.

pipeline.trigger.<github source>.ref: This is only used for push events. This field is treated as a regular expression and multiple refs may be listed. GitHub always sends full ref name, eg. refs/tags/bar and this string is matched against the regular expression.

Reporter Configuration

Zuul reports back to GitHub via GitHub API. Available reports include a PR comment containing the build results, a commit status on start, success and failure, an issue label addition/removal on the PR, and a merge of the PR itself. Status name, description, and context is taken from the pipeline.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>

To report to GitHub, the dictionaries passed to any of the pipeline reporter attributes support the following attributes:

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.status Default: None Type: str

Report status via the Github status API. Set to one of

pending
success
failure

This is usually mutually exclusive with a value set in pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.check, since this reports similar results via a different API. This API is older and results do not show up on the “checks” tab in the Github UI. It is recommended to use check unless you have a specific reason to use the status API.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.status-url Default: link to the build status page Type: string

URL to set in the Github status.

Defaults to a link to the build status or results page. This should probably be left blank unless there is a specific reason to override it.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.check Type: string

Report status via the Github checks API. Set to one of

cancelled
failure
in_progress
neutral
skipped
success

This is usually mutually exclusive with a value set in pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.status, since this reports similar results via a different API.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.comment Default: true: Boolean value that determines if the reporter should add a comment to the pipeline status to the github pull request. Only used for Pull Request based items.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.review: One of approve, comment, or request-changes that causes the reporter to submit a review with the specified status on Pull Request based items. Has no effect on other items.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.review-body: Text that will be submitted as the body of the review. Required if review is set to comment or request-changes.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.merge Default: false: Boolean value that determines if the reporter should merge the pull reqeust. Only used for Pull Request based items.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.label: List of strings each representing an exact label name which should be added to the pull request by reporter. Only used for Pull Request based items.

pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.unlabel: List of strings each representing an exact label name which should be removed from the pull request by reporter. Only used for Pull Request based items.

Requirements Configuration

As described in pipeline.require and pipeline.reject, pipelines may specify that items meet certain conditions in order to be enqueued into the pipeline. These conditions vary according to the source of the project in question. To supply requirements for changes from a GitHub source named my-github, create a configuration such as the following:

pipeline:
  require:
    my-github:
      review:
        - type: approved

This indicates that changes originating from the GitHub connection named my-github must have an approved code review in order to be enqueued into the pipeline.

pipeline.require.<github source>

The dictionary passed to the GitHub pipeline require attribute supports the following attributes:

pipeline.require.<github source>.review

This requires that a certain kind of code review be present for the pull request (it could be added by the event in question). It takes several sub-parameters, all of which are optional and are combined together so that there must be a code review matching all specified requirements.

pipeline.require.<github source>.review.username: If present, a code review from this username is required. It is treated as a regular expression.

pipeline.require.<github source>.review.email: If present, a code review with this email address is required. It is treated as a regular expression.

pipeline.require.<github source>.review.older-than: If present, the code review must be older than this amount of time to match. Provide a time interval as a number with a suffix of “w” (weeks), “d” (days), “h” (hours), “m” (minutes), “s” (seconds). Example 48h or 2d.

pipeline.require.<github source>.review.newer-than: If present, the code review must be newer than this amount of time to match. Same format as “older-than”.

pipeline.require.<github source>.review.type: If present, the code review must match this type (or types).

pipeline.require.<github source>.review.permission: If present, the author of the code review must have this permission (or permissions). The available values are read, write, and admin.

pipeline.require.<github source>.open: A boolean value (true or false) that indicates whether the change must be open or closed in order to be enqueued.

pipeline.require.<github source>.merged: A boolean value (true or false) that indicates whether the change must be merged or not in order to be enqueued.

pipeline.require.<github source>.current-patchset: A boolean value (true or false) that indicates whether the item must be associated with the latest commit in the pull request in order to be enqueued.

pipeline.require.<github source>.status

A string value that corresponds with the status of the pull request. The syntax is user:status:value. This can also be a regular expression.

Zuul does not differentiate between a status reported via status API or via checks API (which is also how Github behaves in terms of branch protection and status checks). Thus, the status could be reported by a pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.status or a pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.check.

When a status is reported via the status API, Github will add a [bot] to the name of the app that reported the status, resulting in something like user[bot]:status:value. For a status reported via the checks API, the app’s slug will be used as is.

pipeline.require.<github source>.label: A string value indicating that the pull request must have the indicated label (or labels).

pipeline.reject.<github source>

The reject attribute is the mirror of the require attribute. It also accepts a dictionary under the connection name. This dictionary supports the following attributes:

pipeline.reject.<github source>.review: This takes a list of code reviews. If a code review matches the provided criteria the pull request can not be entered into the pipeline. It follows the same syntax as pipeline.require.<github source>.review

Reference pipelines configuration

Branch protection rules

The rules prevent Pull requests to be merged on defined branches if they are not met. For instance a branch might require that specific status are marked as success before allowing the merge of the Pull request.

Zuul provides the attribute tenant.untrusted-projects.exclude-unprotected-branches. This attribute is by default set to false but we recommend to set it to true for the whole tenant. By doing so Zuul will benefit from:

exluding in-repo development branches used to open Pull requests. This will prevent Zuul to fetch and read useless branches data to find Zuul configuration files.

reading protection rules configuration from the Github API for a given branch to define whether a Pull request must enter the gate pipeline. As of now Zuul only takes in account “Require status checks to pass before merging” and the checked status checkboxes.

With the use of the reference pipelines below, the Zuul project recommends to set the minimum following settings:

attribute tenant.untrusted-projects.exclude-unprotected-branches to true in the tenant (main.yaml) configuration file.

on each Github repository, activate the branch protections rules and configure the name of the protected branches. Furthermore set “Require status checks to pass before merging” and check the status labels checkboxes (at least `<tenant>/check`) that must be marked as success in order for Zuul to make the Pull request enter the gate pipeline to be merged.

Reference pipelines

Here is an example of standard pipelines you may want to define:

- pipeline:
    name: check
    description: |
      Newly uploaded patchsets enter this pipeline to receive an
      initial check status.
    manager: independent
    trigger:
      github:
        # Run this pipeline on new/changed pull requests
        - event: pull_request
          action:
            - opened
            - changed
            - reopened
        # Run in response to a pull request comment "recheck"
        - event: pull_request
          action: comment
          comment: (?i)^\s*recheck\s*$
        # When using the checks API to report results, failed runs
        # will have a "re-run" button which emits this event.
        - event: check_run
          action: rerequested
          check: .*/check:.*
    start:
      github:
        check: 'in_progress'
        comment: false
        # It is recommended to use the checks API for consistency with
        # other common CI tools that integrate with Github.  Results
        # will appear on the "checks" tab of PR and changes.  There is
        # generally no need to have Zuul leave comments when using the
        # checks API.
        #
        # The older status API appears inline with the PR and can be
        # enabled by uncommenting the "status:" in the various
        # sections below.  You should choose one or the other
        # depending on project preferences.
        #
        #status: 'pending'
        #comment: false
    success:
      github:
        check: 'success'
        comment: false
        #status: 'success'
    failure:
      github:
        check: 'failure'
        comment: false
        #status: 'failure'
    dequeue:
      github:
        check: cancelled
        comment: false

- pipeline:
    name: gate
    description: |
      Changes that have been approved by core developers are enqueued
      in order in this pipeline, and if they pass tests, will be
      merged.
    manager: dependent
    precedence: high
    supercedes: check
    require:
      github:
        review:
          # Require an approval from user with write access (e.g. core-reviewer)
          - permission: write
            type: approved
        # Require label
        label: gate
        open: True
        current-patchset: True
    trigger:
      github:
        - event: pull_request_review
          action: submitted
          state: approved
        - event: pull_request
          action: comment
          comment: (?i)^\s*regate\s*$
        - event: pull_request_review
          action: dismissed
          state: request_changes
        - event: pull_request
          action: status
          status: ".*:success"
        - event: check_run
          action: rerequested
          check: .*/gate:.*
        - event: pull_request
          action: labeled
          label:
            - gate
    start:
      github:
        check: 'in_progress'
        comment: false
        #status: 'pending'
    success:
      github:
        check: 'success'
        comment: false
        #status: 'success'
        merge: true
    failure:
      github:
        check: 'failure'
        #status: 'failure'
        comment: false
    dequeue:
      github:
        check: cancelled
        comment: false
    window-floor: 20
    window-increase-factor: 2

- pipeline:
    name: post
    post-review: true
    description: This pipeline runs jobs that operate after each change is merged.
    manager: independent
    precedence: low
    trigger:
      github:
        - event: push
          ref: ^refs/heads/.*$

- pipeline:
    name: tag
    description: This pipeline runs jobs in response to any tag event.
    manager: independent
    precedence: high
    post-review: True
    trigger:
      github:
        - event: push
          ref: ^refs/tags/.*$

Github Checks API

Github provides two distinct methods for reporting results; a “checks” and a “status” API.

The checks API provides some additional features compared to the status API like file comments and custom actions (e.g. cancel a running build).

Either can be chosen when configuring Zuul to report for your Github project. However, there are some considerations to take into account when choosing the API.

Design decisions

The Github checks API defines the concepts of Check Suites and Check Runs. Check suites are a collection of check runs for a specific commit and summarize a final status

A priori the check suite appears to be a good mapping for a pipeline execution in Zuul, where a check run maps to a single job execution that is part of the pipeline run. Unfortunately, there are a few problematic restrictions mapping between Github and Zuul concepts.

Github check suites are opaque and the current status, duration and the overall conclusion are all calculated and set automatically whenever an included check run is updated. Most importantly, there can only be one check suite per commit SHA, per app. Thus there is no facility for for Zuul to create multiple check suite results for a change, e.g. one check suite for each pipeline such as check and gate.

The Github check suite thus does not map well to Zuul’s concept of multiple pipelines for a single change. Since a check suite is unique and global for the change, it can not be used to flag the status of arbitrary pipelines. This makes the check suite API insufficient for recording details that Zuul needs such as “the check pipeline has passed but the gate pipeline has failed”.

Another issue is that Zuul only reports on the results of the whole pipeline, not individual jobs. Reporting each Zuul job as a separate check is problematic for a number of reasons.

Zuul often runs the same job for the same change multiple times; for example in the check and gate pipeline. There is no facility for these runs to be reported differently in the single check suite for the Github change.

When configuring branch protection in Github, only a check run can be selected as required status check. This is in conflict with managing jobs in pipelines with Zuul. For example, to implement branch protection on GitHub would mean listing each job as a dedicated check, leading to a check run list that is not kept in sync with the project’s Zuul pipeline configuration. Additionally, you lose some of Zuul’s features like non-voting jobs as Github branch protections has no concept of a non-voting job.

Thus Zuul can integrate with the checks API, but only at a pipeline level. Each pipeline execution will map to a check-run result reported to Github.

Behaviour in Zuul

Reporting

The Github reporter is able to report both a status pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.status or a check pipeline.<reporter>.<github source>.check. While it’s possible to configure a Github reporter to report both, it’s recommended to use only one. Reporting both might result in duplicated status check entries in the Github PR (the section below the comments).

Trigger

The Github driver is able to trigger on a reported check (check_run) similar to a reported status (status).

Requirements

While trigger and reporter differentiates between status and check, the Github driver does not differentiate between them when it comes to pipeline requirements. This is mainly because Github also doesn’t differentiate between both in terms of branch protection and status checks.

Actions / Events

Github provides a set of default actions for check suites and check runs. Those actions are available as buttons in the Github UI. Clicking on those buttons will emit webhook events which will be handled by Zuul.

These actions are only available on failed check runs / check suites. So far, a running or successful check suite / check run does not provide any action from Github side.

Available actions are:

Re-run all checks: Github emits a webhook event with type check_suite and action rerequested that is meant to re-run all check-runs contained in this check suite. Github does not provide the list of check-runs in that case, so it’s up to the Github app what should run.
Re-run failed checks: Github emits a webhook event with type check_run and action rerequested for each failed check run contained in this suite.
Re-run: Github emits a webhook event with type check_run and action rerequested for the specific check run.

Zuul will handle all events except for the Re-run all checks event; it does not make sense in the Zuul model to trigger all pipelines to run simultaneously.

These events are unable to be customized in Github. Github will always report “You have successfully requested …” despite nothing listening to the event. Therefore, it might be a solution to handle the Re-run all checks event in Zuul similar to Re-run failed checks just to not do anything while Github makes the user believe an action was really triggered.

File comments (annotations)

Check runs can be used to post file comments directly in the files of the PR. Those are similar to user comments, but must provide some more information.

Zuul jobs can already return file comments via zuul_return (see: Return Values). We can simply use this return value, build the necessary annotations (how Github calls it) from it and attach them to the check run.

Custom actions

Check runs can provide some custom actions which will result in additional buttons being available in the Github UI for this specific check run. Clicking on such a button will emit a webhook event with type check_run and action requested_action and will additionally contain the id/name of the requested action which we can define when creating the action on the check run.

We could use these custom actions to provide some “Re-run” action on a running check run (which might otherwise be stuck in case a check run update fails) or to abort a check run directly from the Github UI.

Restrictions and Recommendations

Although both the checks API and the status API can be activated for a Github reporter at the same time, it’s not recommended to do so as this might result in multiple status checks to be reported to the PR for the same pipeline execution (which would result in duplicated entries in the status section below the comments of a PR).

In case the update on a check run fails (e.g. request timeout when reporting success or failure to Github), the check run will stay in status “in_progess” and there will be no way to re-run the check run via the Github UI as the predefined actions are only available on failed check runs. Thus, it’s recommended to configure a comment trigger on the pipeline to still be able to trigger re-run of the stuck check run via e.g. “recheck”.

The check suite will only list check runs that were reported by Zuul. If the requirements for a certain pipeline are not met and it is not run, the check run for this pipeline won’t be listed in the check suite. However, this does not affect the required status checks. If the check run is enabled as required, Github will still show it in the list of required status checks - even if it didn’t run yet - just not in the check suite.