GitHub Actions Importer incorrectly parses a GitHub Enterprise Server repository URL as an Azure DevOps repository

[felipe-leon-NTT]

Summary

We are using GitHub Actions Importer to assess the migration of Azure DevOps YAML pipelines to GitHub Actions.

The Azure DevOps pipelines are stored in GitHub Enterprise Server repositories and consume centralized Azure DevOps YAML templates from another GitHub Enterprise Server repository.

Pipelines without external templates are extracted and converted successfully.

Pipelines that reference templates stored in GitHub Enterprise Server consistently fail during extraction. GitHub Actions Importer attempts to parse a GitHub Enterprise Server repository URL as if it were an Azure DevOps repository URL.

Environment

• Source CI/CD platform: Azure DevOps Services
• Source repositories: GitHub Enterprise Server
• Target platform: GitHub Enterprise Cloud
• GitHub Actions Importer version: v1.3.6
• GitHub CLI version: v2.92.0
• Operating system: Windows 11

GitHub Actions Importer has been updated using: gh actions-importer update

Command

The issue can be reproduced with a command equivalent to:

gh actions-importer dry-run azure-devops pipeline \
  --pipeline-id {pipeline_id} \
  --output-dir migration-execs/dry-run \
  --credentials-file actions-importer-credentials.yml \
  --no-ssl-verify
  --no-http-cache

Actual result

The extraction fails with the following error:

There was an error extracting the Azure DevOps pipeline
(https://dev.azure.com/{ADO_org}/{ADO_project}/_build?definitionId=188)

Message: Unable to parse Azure DevOps project URL.
Ensure it is in the format of
https://dev.azure.com/:organization/:project_name/git/:repository_name

Azure DevOps URL provided:
https://github.subdomain.com/{source_GHES_org}/{repository_where_the_pipeline_definition_is_stored}.git

The URL shown in the error is a valid GitHub Enterprise Server repository URL. It is not intended to be parsed as an Azure DevOps repository URL.

Azure DevOps repository metadata

The Azure DevOps Build Definitions API returns the expected repository metadata:

{
  "type": "GitHubEnterprise",
  "name": "{source_GHES_org}/{repository_where_the_pipeline_definition_is_stored}",
  "url": "https://github.subdomain.com/{source_GHES_org}/{repository_where_the_pipeline_definition_is_stored}.git"
}

This confirms that Azure DevOps correctly identifies the pipeline repository as a GitHub Enterprise Server repository.

External template configuration

The pipeline uses an external repository resource equivalent to:

resources:
  repositories:
    - repository: centralTemplates
      type: githubenterprise
      name: {source_GHES_org}/central-repository-with-templates
      endpoint: [REDACTED]
      ref: [REDACTED]

The pipeline then consumes templates from this repository using references equivalent to:

extends:
  template: pipelines/templates/entrypoint.yml@centralTemplates

or:

- template: pipelines/templates/example.yml@centralTemplates

Credentials validation

We configured a credentials file containing credentials for the GitHub Enterprise Server instance:

- url: https://github.subdomain.com
  access_token: ******************************************
- url: https://github.com
  provider: github
  access_token: ******************************************
- url: https://dev.azure.com
  access_token: ******************************************

The provided token can successfully access both:

• The application repository containing the main pipeline YAML.
• The centralized repository containing the templates.

Tests

We performed the following control tests:

1. Azure DevOps pipelines that do not consume external templates are converted successfully using the same environment and credentials.

2. Pipelines that consume templates from GitHub Enterprise Server fail consistently.

3. Providing pipeline YAML locally with --source-file-path does not fully resolve the problem when repository/template references remain in the YAML.

These results indicate that Azure DevOps, the service connection, the repository metadata, the template paths, and the credentials are valid.

Expected result

GitHub Actions Importer should recognize repository resources declared as githubenterprise, retrieve the referenced YAML templates from GitHub Enterprise Server using the supplied credentials, and convert the expanded Azure DevOps pipeline.

At minimum, it should not send a GitHub Enterprise Server URL to the Azure DevOps repository URL parser.

[mohammadrezwankhan]

[felipe-leon-NTT]

@mohammadrezwankhan first of all: thank you for your response!

I have checked the templates section in the documentation of the GitHub Actions Importer but I cannot find the point indicating explicitly that only the external templates from an Azure DevOps repository or a GitHub.com repository are supported. The closest occurrence is this table that indicates as supported platforms "Templates in a different Azure DevOps organization, project, or repository" and "Templates in a GitHub repository". I suppose that the second one means GitHub.com.

About the workarounds:

1. In our case this solution is not valid for us.
2. I have tried this one and obtained a successful translation of the pipeline with only one issue. To get the expanded pipeline, the endpoint POST https://dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_apis/pipelines/{pipelineId}/preview?api-version=7.1, failed in my case returning this error:

{
    "$id": "1",
    "innerException": null,
    "message": "Checkout of repository 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' is not supported. Only 'self', 'none', or a repository alias are supported.\nCheckout of repository 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' is not supported. Only 'self', 'none', or a repository alias are supported.",
    "typeName": "Microsoft.Azure.Pipelines.WebApi.PipelineValidationException, Microsoft.Azure.Pipelines.WebApi",
    "typeKey": "PipelineValidationException",
    "errorCode": 0,
    "eventId": 3000
}

This is the pipeline definition:

name: $(date:yyyyMMdd)$(rev:.r)

trigger:
  batch: true
  branches:
    exclude:
      - '*'

pr:
  branches:
    include:
    - master
    - release/*
    - feature/*

resources:
  repositories:
    - repository: self
    - repository: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
      type: githubenterprise
      name: MyOrg/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
      endpoint: https://github.subdomain.com/
      ref: main
    - repository: YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
      type: githubenterprise
      name: MyOrg/YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
      endpoint: https://github.subdomain.com/
      ref: master
    - repository: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
      type: githubenterprise
      name: MyOrg/ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
      endpoint: https://github.subdomain.com/
      ref: master
 
stages:
  - template: pipelines/templates/entrypoint.yml@XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Doing a quick search I found another endpoint:

POST https://dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_apis/build/builds/{buildId}/logs/{logId}?api-version=7.1

This one returns the expanded pipeline in YAML format for a given execution. The buildId can be obtained navigating to a specific run of the pipeline (https://dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_build/results?buildId={buildId}&view=results) and logId has to be set to 1.
I have saved the response of the request sent to this endpoint as a YAML file and run the GitHub Actions Importer using the --source-file-path parameter as you indicated and the translation of the pipeline was successful.