The create-cloud-deploy-release GitHub Action creates a Cloud Deploy release to manage the deployment of an application to one or more Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Anthos, or Cloud Run targets.

This is not an officially supported Google product, and it is not covered by a Google Cloud support contract. To report bugs or request features in a Google Cloud product, please contact Google Cloud support.

• This action requires Google Cloud credentials that are authorized to access the secrets being requested. See Authorization for more information.

• This action runs using Node 20. If you are using self-hosted GitHub Actions runners, you must use runner version 2.285.0 or newer.

• This action depends on the existence of a Cloud Deploy delivery pipeline that is configured for the targets to which the application will be deployed.

jobs:
  job_id:
    # ...

    permissions:
      contents: 'read'
      id-token: 'write'

    steps:
    - uses: 'actions/checkout@v4'

    - uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v2'
      with:
        workload_identity_provider: 'projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider'
        service_account: 'my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com'

   - id: create-release
     uses: 'google-github-actions/create-cloud-deploy-release@v1'
      with:
        name: 'demo-app-v1-2-3'
        description: 'Add new functionality to demo-app'
        delivery_pipeline: 'demo-app-pipeline'
        region: 'us-central1'
        images: 'demo-app=us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/demo-app-project/demo-app-repo/demo-app:v1.2.3'
        source: 'demo-app'

• name: (Required) The name for the release.

• delivery_pipeline (Required): The delivery pipeline to use for the release.

• source: (Required) The location of the files to be included in the release; typically application configuration manifests.

• build_artifacts: (Required, unless providing images) Path to a Skaffold output file containing the details of the application image(s) to be released.

• images: (Required, unless providing build_artifacts) The details of the application image(s) to be released, in the format image1=path/to/image1:v1@sha256:45db24, for example:

  with:
    images: |-
      image1=image.repo/path/to/image1:v1@sha256:45db24
      image2=image.repo/path/to/image2:v1@sha256:f32780

• region: (Optional) Region of the delivery pipeline. If not supplied, a previously configured gcloud setting using deploy/region is required, for example gcloud config set deploy/region [REGION].

• disable_initial_rollout: (Optional) Prevent the release being deployed to the first target in the delivery pipeline.

• gcs_source_staging_dir: (Optional) A directory in Google Cloud Storage to copy the source used for staging the build.

• skaffold_file: (Optional) Path of the skaffold file absolute or relative to the source directory.

• annotations: (Optional) Add additional annotations to the release.

  with:
    annotations: |-
      annotation1=value1
      annotation2=value2

  The GitHub Action will automatically apply the following annotations to the release to enhance the user experience:

  git-sha: ecdeca633a230bfade4cc8195ae23af030922319
  commit: <commit>
  

• labels: (Optional) Add additional labels to the release.

  with:
    labels: |-
      label1=value1
      label2=value2

  The GitHub Action will automatically apply the following label to the release to enhance the user experience:

  managed-by: github-actions
  

  Labels have strict naming and casing requirements. See Requirements for labels for more information.

• description: (Optional) Include a description of the release.

• deploy_parameters: (Optional) Additional parameters to supply at release creation time.

  with:
    deploy_parameters: |-
      parameter1=value1
      parameter2=value2

  See the Deploy Parameters section in the Cloud Deploy documentation for details of how to use the corresponding placeholders in your manifest(s).

• flags: (Optional) Space separated list of other Cloud Deploy flags, examples can be found here. This can be used to access features that are not exposed via this GitHub Action.

  with:
    flags: '--from-k8s-manifest=...'

• gcloud_version: (Optional) Version of the Cloud SDK to install. If unspecified or set to "latest", the latest available gcloud SDK version for the target platform will be installed. Example: "290.0.1".

• gcloud_component: (Optional) Version of the Cloud SDK components to install and use. If unspecified, the latest or released version will be used. This is the equivalent of running 'gcloud alpha run' or 'gcloud beta run'. Valid values are alpha or beta.

• project_id: (Optional) ID of the Google Cloud project in which to deploy the service. The default value is computed from the environment.

• name: The full name of the release in Cloud Deploy, including project and pipeline names, as well as the chosen name of the release itself.

• link: A link to the Cloud Deploy release in the Google Cloud Web Console.

There are a few ways to authenticate this action. The caller must have permissions to access the secrets being requested.

Use google-github-actions/auth to authenticate the action. You can use Workload Identity Federation or traditional Service Account Key JSON authentication.

jobs:
  job_id:
    permissions:
      contents: 'read'
      id-token: 'write'

    steps:

    # ...

    - uses: 'google-github-actions/auth@v2'
      with:
        workload_identity_provider: 'projects/123456789/locations/global/workloadIdentityPools/my-pool/providers/my-provider'
        service_account: 'my-service-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com'

    - uses: 'google-github-actions/create-cloud-deploy-release@v1'
      with:
        name: 'example-app'
        ...

If you are hosting your own runners, and those runners are on Google Cloud, you can leverage the Application Default Credentials of the instance. This will authenticate requests as the service account attached to the instance. This only works using a custom runner hosted on GCP.

jobs:
  job_id:
    steps:
    # ...

    - uses: 'google-github-actions/create-cloud-deploy-release@v1'
      with:
        name: 'example-app'
        ...

The action will automatically detect and use the Application Default Credentials.

To use the default Cloud Deploy configuration you will need to authenticate to Google Cloud as a service account with the following roles:

• Cloud Deploy Releaser (roles/clouddeploy.releaser)
  • To create and retrieve releases and rollouts
• Cloud Storage Admin (roles/storage.admin)
  • To write release packages

This is in addition to any other roles that may be needed earlier in the pipeline, for example roles/artifactregistry.writer to allow images to be pushed to Artifact Registry.

By default, Cloud Deploy itself will use the Compute Engine default service account, PROJECT_NUMBER-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com as described in the documentation for IAM within Cloud Deploy, though for production use-cases it's recommended that you create one or more dedicated service accounts as detailed in the Cloud Deploy documentation. A custom service account can be granted the roles/clouddeploy.jobRunner role in the Cloud Deploy project to enable required permissions.

You may find that Organizational Policy rules prevent certain permissions being assigned to default service accounts. In this case please consult with your organization administrators.

By default the service account used by Cloud Deploy requires the following roles:

• Cloud Logging Writer (roles/logging.logWriter)
  • To write logs
• Cloud Storage Viewer (storage/object.viewer)
  • To read Cloud Deploy artifacts
• Cloud Storage Creator (storage/object.creator)
  • To write Cloud Deploy artifacts

Depending on your Cloud Deploy configuration you may choose to create more granular roles for custom resources, rather than relying on the default.

The service account used by Cloud Deploy additionally needs permisisons that allow deployment of a service to your target runtime, GKE or Cloud Run, as described in the following sections. This could be:

• The default compute service account
• The same custom service account you created for release creation, or
• A separate custom service account dedicated to deployment.

To deploy to Cloud Run, the service account used by Cloud Deploy needs the following permissions:

• Cloud Run Developer (roles/run.developer)
  • Read and write access to all Cloud Run resources.

The service account additionally needs to be a member of the service account used by Cloud Run, with role Service Account User. This may be the Compute Engine default service account, (PROJECT_NUMBER-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com) or a custom service account, depending on your configuration. To grant iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permissions for a service account, use one of the methods found in the IAM documentation.

To deploy to GKE, the service account used by Cloud Deploy needs the following permissions:

• Kubernetes Engine Developer (roles/container.developer)
  • Provides access to Kubernetes API objects inside clusters.

In all cases, you should follow the principle of least privilege when assigning IAM roles. When possible, grant roles at the resource level as opposed to the project level.

• Example workflows for create-cloud-deploy-release