CodeQL Action

This action runs GitHub's industry-leading static analysis engine, CodeQL, against a repository's source code to find security vulnerabilities. It then automatically uploads the results to GitHub so they can be displayed in the repository's security tab. CodeQL runs an extensible set of queries, which have been developed by the community and the GitHub Security Lab to find common vulnerabilities in your code.

License

This project is released under the MIT License.

The underlying CodeQL CLI, used in this action, is licensed under the GitHub CodeQL Terms and Conditions. As such, this action may be used on open source projects hosted on GitHub, and on private repositories that are owned by an organisation with GitHub Advanced Security enabled.

Usage

To get code scanning results from CodeQL analysis on your repo you can use the following workflow as a template:

name: "Code Scanning - Action"

on:
  push:
  pull_request:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0 * * 0'

jobs:
  CodeQL-Build:

    strategy:
      fail-fast: false

    # CodeQL runs on ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, and macos-latest
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          # Must fetch at least the immediate parents so that if this is
          # a pull request then we can checkout the head of the pull request.
          # Only include this option if you are running this workflow on pull requests.
          fetch-depth: 2

      # If this run was triggered by a pull request event then checkout
      # the head of the pull request instead of the merge commit.
      # Only include this step if you are running this workflow on pull requests.
      - run: git checkout HEAD^2
        if: ${{ github.event_name == 'pull_request' }}

      # Initializes the CodeQL tools for scanning.
      - name: Initialize CodeQL
        uses: github/codeql-action/init@v1
        # Override language selection by uncommenting this and choosing your languages
        # with:
        #   languages: go, javascript, csharp, python, cpp, java

      # Autobuild attempts to build any compiled languages (C/C++, C#, or Java).
      # If this step fails, then you should remove it and run the build manually (see below).
      - name: Autobuild
        uses: github/codeql-action/autobuild@v1

      # ℹ️ Command-line programs to run using the OS shell.
      # 📚 https://git.io/JvXDl

      # ✏️ If the Autobuild fails above, remove it and uncomment the following
      #    three lines and modify them (or add more) to build your code if your
      #    project uses a compiled language

      #- run: |
      #   make bootstrap
      #   make release

      - name: Perform CodeQL Analysis
        uses: github/codeql-action/analyze@v1

If you prefer to integrate this within an existing CI workflow, it should end up looking something like this:

- name: Initialize CodeQL
  uses: github/codeql-action/init@v1
  with:
    languages: go, javascript

# Here is where you build your code
- run: |
  make bootstrap
  make release

- name: Perform CodeQL Analysis
  uses: github/codeql-action/analyze@v1

Actions triggers

The CodeQL action should be run on push events, and on a schedule. Push events allow us to do a detailed analysis of the delta in a pull request, while the schedule event ensures that GitHub regularly scans the repository for the latest vulnerabilities, even if the repository becomes inactive. This action does not support the pull_request event.

Configuration

You may optionally specify additional queries for CodeQL to execute by using a config file. The queries must belong to a QL pack and can be in your repository or any public repository. You can choose a single .ql file, a folder containing multiple .ql files, a .qls query suite file, or any combination of the above. To use queries stored in your repository or from other repositories use the same syntax as when using an action. Note that when using local queries starting with ./, the path is relative to the root of the repository and not to the location of the config file.

You can disable the default queries using disable-default-queries: true.

You can choose to ignore some files or folders from the analysis, or include additional files/folders for analysis. This only works for Javascript and Python analysis. Identifying potential files for extraction:

• Scans each folder that's defined as paths in turn, traversing subfolders, and looking for relevant files.
• If it finds a subfolder that's defined as paths-ignore, stop traversing.
• If a file or folder is both in paths and paths-ignore, the paths-ignore is ignored.

Use the config-file parameter of the init action to enable the configuration file. For example:

- uses: github/codeql-action/init@v1
  with:
    config-file: ./.github/codeql/codeql-config.yml

A config file looks like this:

name: "My CodeQL config"

disable-default-queries: true

queries:
  - name: In-repo queries (Runs the queries located in the my-queries folder of the repo)
    uses: ./my-queries
  - name: External Javascript QL pack (Runs a QL pack located in an external repo)
    uses: /Semmle/ql/javascript/ql/src/Electron@master
  - name: External query (Runs a single query located in an external QL pack)
    uses: Semmle/ql/javascript/ql/src/AngularJS/DeadAngularJSEventListener.ql@master
  - name: Select query suite (Runs a query suites)
    uses: ./codeql-querypacks/complex-python-querypack/rootAndBar.qls

paths:
  - src/util.ts

paths-ignore:
  - src
  - lib

Troubleshooting

Trouble with Go dependencies

If you use a vendor directory

Try passing

env:
  GOFLAGS: "-mod=vendor"

to github/codeql-action/analyze.

If you do not use a vendor directory

Dependencies on public repositories should just work. If you have dependencies on private repositories, one option is to use git config and a personal access token to authenticate when downloading dependencies. Add a section like

steps:
  - name: Configure git private repo access
    env:
      TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_PAT }}
    run: |
      git config --global url."https://${TOKEN}@github.com/foo/bar".insteadOf "https://github.com/foo/bar"
      git config --global url."https://${TOKEN}@github.com/foo/baz".insteadOf "https://github.com/foo/baz"

before any codeql actions. A similar thing can also be done with an SSH key or deploy key.

C# using dotnet version 2 on linux

This currently requires invoking dotnet with the /p:UseSharedCompilation=false flag. For example:

dotnet build /p:UseSharedCompilation=false

Version 3 does not require the additional flag.

Analysing Go together with other languages on macos-latest

When running on macos it is currently not possible to analyze Go in conjunction with any of Java, C/C++, or C#. Each language can still be analyzed separately.