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Finding and customizing actions

In this article

Actions are the building blocks that power your workflow. A workflow can contain actions created by the community, or you can create your own actions directly within your application's repository. This guide will show you how to discover, use, and customize actions.

Note: GitHub-hosted runners are not currently supported on GitHub Enterprise Server. You can see more information about planned future support on the GitHub public roadmap.

Overview

The actions you use in your workflow can be defined in:

  • The same repository as your workflow file
  • Any public repository
  • A published Docker container image on Docker Hub

GitHub Marketplace is a central location for you to find actions created by the GitHub community.

Note: GitHub Actions on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance may have limited access to actions on GitHub.com or GitHub Marketplace. For more information, see "Managing access to actions from GitHub.com" and contact your GitHub Enterprise site administrator.

Adding an action from the same repository

If an action is defined in the same repository where your workflow file uses the action, you can reference the action with either the ‌{owner}/{repo}@{ref} or ./path/to/dir syntax in your workflow file.

Example repository file structure:

|-- hello-world (repository)
|   |__ .github
|       └── workflows
|           └── my-first-workflow.yml
|       └── actions
|           |__ hello-world-action
|               └── action.yml

Example workflow file:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # This step checks out a copy of your repository.
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      # This step references the directory that contains the action.
      - uses: ./.github/actions/hello-world-action

The action.yml file is used to provide metadata for the action. Learn about the content of this file in "Metadata syntax for GitHub Actions."

Adding an action from a different repository

If an action is defined in a different repository than your workflow file, you can reference the action with the {owner}/{repo}@{ref} syntax in your workflow file.

The action must be stored in a public repository.

jobs:
  my_first_job:
    steps:
      - name: My first step
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2

Referencing a container on Docker Hub

If an action is defined in a published Docker container image on Docker Hub, you must reference the action with the docker://{image}:{tag} syntax in your workflow file. To protect your code and data, we strongly recommend you verify the integrity of the Docker container image from Docker Hub before using it in your workflow.

jobs:
  my_first_job:
    steps:
      - name: My first step