Advanced usage

May 21, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

What this action does

This action manages 2 workflows out of the box (push, pr) and essentially has three steps:

  1. Detect which workflow to run depending on the context:

    • Push to SoT => push
    • PR opened/updated on destination => pr

    If the destination branch doesn't exist on push, it will add the flags --force --init-history

  2. Generate a configuration for each workflow

  3. Run Copybara

What you can do

Force specific workflows

The following will let you override step 1 but let Copybara Action perform step 2 and 3.

It will ensure the push workflow is ran using the auto-generated configuration file.

on:
  push:
jobs:
  move-code:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - uses: olivr/copybara-action@v1.2.5
        with:
          ssh_key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}
          sot_repo: your/repo
          destination_repo: other/repo
          workflow: push

Custom Copybara configuration

The following will let Copybara Action perform step 1 and 3 but let you override step 2.

It will use your configuration instead of the automatically generated one. You can get inspiration from the generated config to get started.

This example is still making use of the workflow detection so my.own.copy.bara.sky must contain a push and a pr workflow

on:
  push:
  pull_request_target:
jobs:
  move-code:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - uses: olivr/copybara-action@v1.2.5
        with:
          access_token: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
          ssh_key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}
          sot_repo: your/repo
          destination_repo: other/repo
          custom_config: my.own.copy.bara.sky

Completely custom

The following will let you override step 1, 2 and let you customize how Copybara Action will perform step 3.

It doesn't make use of any of our helpers for detecting the workflow and generating the configuration. It is even using a custom Copybara docker image!

on:
  push:
jobs:
  move-code:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - uses: olivr/copybara-action@v1.2.5
        with:
          access_token: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
          ssh_key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}
          workflow: create
          custom_config: my.own.copy.bara.sky
          copybara_image: sharelatex/copybara
          copybara_options: --force --init-history

SoT not on GitHub

This action's auto-generated configuration was made for a use case with two GitHub repos. However, if your SoT is not on GitHub, this action is still helpful. Use it on your destination with a custom config and a specific workflow:

on:
  pull_request_target:
jobs:
  move-code:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: olivr/copybara-action@v1.2.5
        with:
          ssh_key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}
          workflow: pr
          custom_config: my.own.copy.bara.sky

More options

Generated config

So you don't have to start your custom config from scratch, you can check out the config template used by this action or even better, you can download the one generated for your use case.

  1. In your repo(s), add the secret ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG and set it to true
  2. Run the action workflow (ie. push a commit to SoT and create a PR in destination)
  3. Check out the artifacts for your action workflow runs
  4. Delete the ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG secret or set it to false (or you may get false positives)

It will look like this: artifact