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Actions Fine Grained Permissions

We’ve enhanced Custom Organization Roles by adding fine-grained permissions for GitHub Actions. Now, with Enterprise Cloud plans, organization owners can assign members and teams specific permissions for managing various aspects of Actions, including:

  • Actions general settings
  • Organization runners and runner groups
  • Actions secrets
  • Actions variables

These additional settings allow organization owners to delegate CI/CD automation management responsibilities to individuals or teams without granting access to any other organization owner privileges.

Please refer to our documentation for more detail about GitHub Actions fine grained permissions with Custom Organization Roles.

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The GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 is generally available

GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 is generally available

GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 is now generally available and gives customers more fine-grained control over deployment requirements, as well as enhanced security controls. Here are a few highlights:

  • Restrict your deployment rollouts to select tag patterns in Actions Environments.
  • Enforce which Actions workflows must pass with organization-wide repository rulesets.
  • Scale your security strategy with Dependabot Alert Rules. This public beta allows customers to choose how to respond to Dependabot alerts automatically by setting up custom auto-triage rules in their repository or organization.
  • Automate pull request merges using Merge Queues. Previously developers needed to manually update their pull requests prior to merging, to ensure their changes wouldn’t break the main branch. These updates would initiate a round of continuous integration checks that needed to pass before a pull request could be merged. But with merge queues, this process is automated by ensuring each pull request queued for merging is tested with other pull requests queued ahead of it.
  • Enhance the security of your code with a public beta of Secret Scanning for non-provider patterns, and an update to Code Scanning’s default setup to support all CodeQL languages.
  • GitHub Project templates are available at the organization level, allowing customers to share out and learn best practices in how to set up and use projects to plan and track their work.
  • Updated global navigation to make using and finding information better, as well as improve accessibility and performance.
  • Highlight text in markdown files with accessibility aspects in mind with the alerts markdown extension, which gives you five levels to use (note, tip, important, warning, and caution).

Read more about GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 in the release notes,
or download it now.
If you have any feedback or questions, please contact our Support team.

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CodeQL 2.16.3: AI-powered autofixes for Python, updated queries, and security fixes

CodeQL is the static analysis engine that powers GitHub code scanning. CodeQL version 2.16.3 has been released and has now been rolled out to code scanning users on GitHub.com.

Important changes in this release include:

  • CodeQL code scanning now supports AI-powered automatic fix suggestions for Python alerts on pull requests. This is automatically enabled for all current autofix preview participants.
  • A new option has been added to the Python extractor: python_executable_name. This allows you to select a non-default Python executable installed on the system running the scan (e.g. py.exe on Windows machines).
  • A fix for CVE-2024-25129, a low-severity data exfiltration vulnerability that could be triggered by processing untrusted databases or CodeQL packs.
  • Two new queries:
  • The sinks of queries java/path-injection and java/path-injection-local have been reworked to reduce the number of false positives.

For a full list of changes, please refer to the complete changelog for version 2.16.3. All new functionality will also be included in GHES 3.13. Users of GHES 3.12 or older can upgrade their CodeQL version.

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Push protection is enabled for free users on GitHub

We’ve started the rollout for enabling push protection on all free user accounts on GitHub. This automatically protects you from accidentally committing secrets to public repositories, regardless of whether the repository itself has secret scanning enabled.

If a secret is detected in any push to a public repository, your push will be blocked. You will have the option to remove the secret from your commits or, if you deem the secret safe, bypass the block.

It might take a week or two for this change to apply to your account; you can verify status and opt-in early in your code security and analysis settings. Once enabled, you also have the option to opt-out. Disabling push protection may cause secrets to be accidentally leaked.

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Enterprise READMEs

Enterprise accounts now have a new root navigational experience, landing all users on an Enterprise Overview. Within this new page, GitHub Enterprise owners can create a README for their enterprise, which will be visible internally to all enterprise members. The Organization page still exists and can be found within the left-hand navigation of the enterprise account. This new experience is available on GitHub.com today and will be included in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.13.

To learn more, read our documentation on creating a README for an enterprise. To provide feedback about what you’d like to see on this new page, you may do so at anytime by clicking Give Feedback on the right-hand side of the new overview page, above the README.

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Copilot – February 27th update

⏫ Copilot Code Completion model updated with more improvements

We’re excited to announce a new update to the model powering Copilot Code Completion across all IDEs! This update includes improved instruction following and performance improvement for our users. Here are the details:

  • Improved instruction following: Copilot can better understand and follow instructions given by the user. This means that Copilot is now better at generating code that matches the user’s intent and requirements.
  • Performance improvement: Finally, this model update includes a performance improvement for Copilot users. While this may not be noticeable in all cases, it can help make Copilot even faster and more efficient for certain tasks.
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Repository Rules – configure merge queue rule – public beta

Configuring merge queue in your repo rulesets is now available in public beta!

Screenshot showing the configuration of merge queue inside a ruleset

Merge queue & rule insights

Until now, rule insights would only list one pull request as merged even when multiple pull requests were merged by the queue at the same time. Also in this beta, each pull request in a merge queue will have an individual record in rule insights, linked to the actor that added the pull request to the merge queue.

Example screenshot showing rules insights and all PRs from a queue

Within the additional data of a rule insight dialog you can now see all the pull requests that merged in the same group along with the checks needed for the queue.

Example screenshot of details of a queue in rule insights

Limitations

  • The merge queue rule cannot be configured via an API. This feature will be available in the near future.
  • Merge Queue for branch protections and repository rules do not support wildcard patterns
  • Not supported in organization rulesets.
  • Multiple merge queues configured against a single branch will prevent merging.

Join the discussion within GitHub Community.

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GitHub Copilot Enterprise is now generally available

GitHub Copilot Enterprise is now generally available

GitHub Copilot Enterprise, our most advanced AI offering to date, is now generally available. With GitHub Copilot Enterprise, you can:

  • Gain a deeper understanding of your organization’s unique codebase: Copilot Chat in GitHub.com understands your code and streamlines code navigation and comprehension for developers.
  • Quickly access organizational knowledge and best practices: By letting developers attach knowledge bases (formerly known as docsets) to conversations, Copilot Chat in GitHub.com can answer questions based on your Markdown documentation stored on GitHub.
  • Review pull requests faster: With pull request summaries generated by GitHub Copilot and the ability to chat about changes in a pull request, reviewers can get up to speed on a pull request quickly and spend more time providing valuable feedback.

Following on from our limited public beta, we are bringing the following improvements to GitHub Copilot Enterprise today to make Copilot even smarter:

  • GitHub Copilot can now search Bing within chat conversations in GitHub.com to answer questions and find information outside of its general knowledge or your codebase (public beta).
  • You can now access your knowledge bases (formerly known as docsets) from any Copilot Chat conversation in GitHub.com with the “Attach knowledge” button. Organization owners can create knowledge bases from an organization’s settings.
  • GitHub Copilot knows about code as you browse, so you no longer have to be explicit about exactly what file, symbol or snippet you want to chat about.

Example conversation demonstrating how GitHub Copilot can access the code you are currently looking at

  • GitHub Copilot generates pull request summaries that are now more structured, with a “Summary” section that gives a high-level overview, and an “Outline” section that walks through the code.
  • GitHub Copilot can now analyze and explain any pull request diff, making it easier for pull request reviewers to understand changes and share great feedback.

Example conversation demonstrating how GitHub Copilot can explain and improve pull request diffs

Ready to give Copilot Chat in GitHub.com a try? Here are some suggested prompts to get you started:

  • Ask a question about recent events to trigger a Bing search: What updates were there in Node.js v20?
  • Open GitHub Copilot Chat on a repository and ask a question about the repository: Where is the turnOn function defined?
  • Open a file on GitHub.com and ask a question about that file: Draft unit test cases for each of the functions in the file I’m currently viewing
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Secret scanning supports user namespace repositories for Enterprise Managed Users

Enterprise Managed Users can now enable secret scanning on their user namespace repositories. Owners of user repositories will receive secret scanning alerts when a supported secret is detected in their repository. User namespace repositories can also enable push protection.

In the enterprise level list of secret scanning alerts, enterprise owners can view all secrets detected in user namespace repositories. Enterprise owners can temporarily access user namespace repositories to view the secret details.

User namespace repositories are included in the security risk and coverage pages.

Secret scanning will also be supported on Enterprise Server personal repositories starting on GHES 3.13.

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New limits on scoped token creation for GitHub Apps

As a proactive measure to protect Github.com availability, GitHub Apps that attempt to create high-complexity scoped installation tokens will receive failures if they would individually reference too many repositories. At the time of release, no GitHub App is above these limits – the limit is approximately 8 times higher than what any app is consuming. See below for details on how complexity is calculated.

Scoped tokens allow a GitHub App to create an installation token that has just a subset of the privileges that the app has within an organization – both a reduced set of repositories, as well as permissions.
In this way, an application with many permissions and access to many repositories can still safely request a token that’s good for just the access that’s currently required, a useful least-privilege feature.

When requesting a scoped token, applications can indicate both the permissions and repositories that are desired. Both parameters are optional, and if either is omitted the full corresponding access will be given to the token, either all granted permissions or all accessible repositories.

The first limit being added is when the repositories are included in the token request – now, no more than 500 individual repositories can be listed.

The second limit is if the repositories are not listed but permissions are, and the application is installed on some repositories in the organization – as in, it has not been explicitly granted access to all repositories in the organization.
In that case, the limit is based on the number of permissions being requested and the number of repositories the application has access to. If the complexity limit is exceeded, the application will recieve an error: Too many repositories for installation, and provides the maximum number of repositories the application can have access to in order to succeed, as well as other options to reduce the complexity of your token, which are provided here as well.

To reduce the complexity of your token request, you can do one of the following:
1. Reduce the number of repositories that the application has access to in the organization.
2. Reduce the number of permissions requested for the token.
3. Set the application to have access to “all” of the organization’s repositories.
4. Not request a scoped token at all, and instead request a standard installation token.

Any of these options will reduce the complexity of the token and allow the application to fetch tokens for that organization once again.

To learn more about GitHub App scoped token issuance and installation, see our documentation:

  • “Generating an installation access token for a GitHub App”
  • “Reviewing and modifying installed GitHub Apps”
  • REST API: “Create an installation access token for an app”
    • See more

    CodeQL 2.16.2: New Android queries and improved precision

    CodeQL 2.16.2 is now available to users of GitHub code scanning on github.com, and all new functionality will also be included in GHES 3.13. Users of GHES 3.12 or older can upgrade their CodeQL version.

    Important changes in this release include:

    We added two new Java / Android queries (java/android/sensitive-text and java/android/sensitive-notification) to detect sensitive data exposure via text fields and notifications.

    We have improved the precision of several C/C++ queries.

    We now recognize collection expressions introduced in C# 12 (e.g. [1, y, 4, .. x]).

    For a full list of changes, please refer to the complete changelog for version 2.16.2

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    Secret scanning adds validity checks for Mailgun and Mailchimp

    Secret scanning is extending validity check support to Mailgun (mailgun_api_key) and Mailchimp (mailchimp_api_key) API keys.

    Validity checks indicate if the leaked credentials are active and could still be exploited. If you’ve previously enabled validation checks for a given repository, GitHub will now automatically verify validity for alerts on supported token types.

    Validity checks are available for repositories with GitHub Advanced Security on Enterprise Cloud. You can enable the feature at both organization and repository levels from the “Code security and analysis” settings page by checking the option to “automatically verify if a secret is valid by sending to the relevant partner.”

    Learn more about secret scanning or our supported patterns for validity checks.

    See more

    The GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 Release Candidate is available

    The GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 release candidate is here

    GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 gives customers more fine-grained control over deployment requirements, enhanced security controls, and some . Here are a few highlights:

    • Restrict your deployment rollouts to select tag patterns in Actions Environments.
    • Enforce which Actions workflows must pass with organization-wide repository rulesets.
    • Scale your security strategy with Dependabot Alert Rules. This public beta allows customers to choose how to respond to Dependabot alerts automatically by setting up custom auto-triage rules in their repository or organization.
    • Automate pull request merges using Merge Queues. Previously developers needed to manually update their pull requests prior to merging, to ensure their changes wouldn’t break the main branch. These updates would initiate a round of continuous integration checks that needed to pass before a pull request could be merged. But with merge queues, this process is automated by ensuring each pull request queued for merging is tested with other pull requests queued ahead of it.
    • Enhance the security of your code with a public beta of Secret Scanning for non-provider patterns, and an update to Code Scanning’s default setup to support all CodeQL languages.
    • GitHub Project templates are available at the organization level, allowing customers to share out and learn best practices in how to set up and use projects to plan and track their work.
    • Updated global navigation to make using and finding information better, as well as improve accessibility and performance.
    • Highlight text in markdown files with accessibility aspects in mind with the alerts markdown extension, which gives you five levels to use (note, tip, important, warning, and caution).

    Release Candidates are a way for you to try the latest features early, and they help us gather feedback to
    ensure the release works in your environment. They should be tested on non-production environments.
    Read more about the release candidate process.

    Read more about GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 in the release notes,
    or download the release candidate now.
    If you have any feedback or questions, please contact our Support team.

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    Secret scanning’s push protection will soon be enabled for all free accounts on GitHub

    Developers with free accounts on GitHub could enable secret scanning’s push protection at the user level since last August. This automatically protects you from accidentally committing secrets to public repositories, regardless of whether the repository itself has secret scanning enabled. On February 27, this feature will be start to be enabled automatically for all free accounts across GitHub.

    If a secret is detected in any push to a public repository, your push will be blocked. You will have the option to remove the secret from your commits or, if you deem the secret safe, bypass the block.

    You can enable this feature now in your user settings. After February 27, you can opt out of push protection and disable it. Disabling push protection may cause secrets to be accidentally leaked.

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    Repository Custom Properties GA and Ruleset Improvements

    repository custom properties banner image

    We’re excited to announce the general availability of Repository Custom Properties, a major enhancement to how repositories are managed and classified across GitHub organizations.

    Properties offer a flexible way to add meaningful metadata to your repositories that simplifies repository classification, enhances discoverability, and seamlessly integrates with rulesets.

    Check out this video from our own Jon Peck for a walk through of a common scenario.

    New organization repositories list public beta

    Starting today the new repositories list view moves to public beta.

    Improvements to Repository Rulesets

    Repository Rules now support adding Dependabot to bypass lists. This enables you to let Dependabot merge changes to a repository’s protected branch.

    Learn more about managing custom properties for your organization and managing rulesets for your organization.

    Head over to community discussions for feedback.

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    Deprecation notice: v1 and v2 of the artifact actions

    On December 14, 2023, GitHub Actions released v4 of the actions to upload and download artifacts. This version improves upload/download speeds by up to 98%, addresses long-standing customer feedback requests, and represents the future of artifacts in GitHub Actions.

    With the introduction of v4, we will be deprecating v1 and v2 of actions/upload-artifact, actions/download-artifact, and related npm packages on June 30, 2024. We strongly encourage customers to update their workflows to begin using v4 of the artifact actions.

    In order to prevent issues for customers using GitHub Connect, the tags for v1 through v2 will not be removed from the actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact project repositories. However, attempting to use a version of the actions after the announced deprecation date will result in a workflow failure. This deprecation will not impact any existing versions of GitHub Enterprise Server being used by customers.

    This announcement will also be added to actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact. Please visit the documentation to learn more about storing workflow data as artifacts in Actions.

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    Dependabot support for pub private repositories and registries

    If you use private hosted pub repositories or registries to manage your Dart dependencies, Dependabot can now automatically update those dependencies. By adding the details of the private repository or registry to dependabot.yml, Dependabot will be able to access and update these dependencies.

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    Secret scanning adds webhook support for validity checks

    The secret_scanning_alert webhook is sent for activity related to secret scanning alerts. Secret scanning webhooks now support validity checks, so you can keep track of changes to validity status.

    Changes to the secret_scanning_alert webhook:

    • A new validity property that is either active, inactive, or unknown depending on the most recent validity check.
    • A new action type, validated, which is triggered when a secret’s validity status changes.

    Note: you must enable validity checks at the repository or organization level in order to opt in to the feature. This can be done from your secret scanning settings on the Code security and analysis settings page by selecting the option to “automatically verify if a secret is valid by sending it to the relevant partner.”

    Learn more about which secret types are supported or the secret scanning webhook.

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    Enhanced Codespaces Connection

    We’re excited to announce an important upgrade to the Codespaces connection infrastructure. Our team has been working to enhance the security, reliability, and overall performance of both the main connection and port forwarding features.

    What’s Changing

    To support these enhancements, we require the addition of *.visualstudio.com to be allowlisted for your firewall rules. This is a crucial step to ensure a seamless and secure experience with Codespaces.

    Release Plan

    Today we are going to enable you to opt into this new connection system through the Feature Preview section on github.com. This feature flag will be an opt-in flag for two weeks to enable you to test these changes against your own firewalls.

    In two weeks we will turn on these changes as a default. Users can opt out of using this new connection system for 30 days under the same feature flag. Customers who need more time will be able to request extra time through GitHub Support.

    After 30 more days we will move everyone over to our new connection system.

    Your Action Needed

    Ensure that *.visualstudio.com is allowlisted under your firewall rules.

    Enable the feature flag under github.com to test these changes out yourself, as well as to ensure these domains are added to your firewall rules promptly to maintain uninterrupted access and optimal functionality of Codespaces.

    If you’re having any issues, read our firewall troubleshooting guide.

    We appreciate your cooperation and understanding as we continue to improve your experience with Codespaces. If you have any questions or need assistance, our support team is here to help.

    Thank you for being a valued member of the Codespaces community.

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