docs/content/admin/github-actions/manually-syncing-actions-from-githubcom.md

title	intro	redirect_from	versions
Manually syncing actions from GitHub.com	For users that need access to actions from {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %}, you can sync specific actions to your {% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_server %} instance.	[/enterprise/admin/github-actions/manually-syncing-actions-from-githubcom]	[{enterprise-server >=2.22}]

{% data reusables.actions.enterprise-beta %} {% data reusables.actions.enterprise-github-hosted-runners %}

{% data reusables.actions.enterprise-no-internet-actions %}

The recommended approach of enabling access to actions from {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %} is to enable automatic access to all actions. You can do this by using {% data variables.product.prodname_github_connect %} to integrate {% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_server %} with {% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_cloud %} . For more information, see "Enabling automatic access to {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %} actions using {% data variables.product.prodname_github_connect %}".

However, if you want stricter control over which actions are allowed in your enterprise, you can follow this guide to use {% data variables.product.company_short %}'s open source actions-sync tool to sync individual action repositories from {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %} to your enterprise instance.

About the actions-sync tool

The actions-sync tool must be run on a machine that can access the {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %} API and your {% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_server %} instance's API. The machine doesn't need to be connected to both at the same time.

If your machine has access to both systems at the same time, you can do the sync with a single actions-sync sync command. If you can only access one system at a time, you can use the actions-sync pull and push commands.

The actions-sync tool can only download actions from {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %} that are stored in public repositories.

Prerequisites

• Before using the actions-sync tool, you must ensure that all destination organizations already exist on your enterprise instance. The following example demonstrates how to sync actions to an organization named synced-actions on an enterprise instance. For more information, see "Creating a new organization from scratch."
• You must create a personal access token (PAT) on your enterprise instance that can create and write to repositories in the destination organizations. For more information, see "Creating a personal access token."

Example: Using the actions-sync tool

This example demonstrates using the actions-sync tool to sync an individual action from {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %} to an enterprise instance.

{% note %}

Note: This example uses the actions-sync sync command, which requires concurrent access to both the {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom_the_website %} API and your {% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_server %} instance's API from your machine. If you can only access one system at a time, you can use the actions-sync pull and push commands. For more information, see the actions-sync README.

{% endnote %}

1. Download and extract the latest actions-sync release for your machine's operating system.

2. Create a directory to store cache files for the tool.

3. Run the actions-sync sync command:

   ./actions-sync sync \
     --cache-dir "cache" \
     --destination-token "aabbccddeeffgg" \
     --destination-url "https://my-ghes-instance" \
     --repo-name "docker/build-push-action:synced-actions/docker-build-push-action"
   

   The above command uses the following arguments:

   • --cache-dir: The cache directory on the machine running the command.

   • --destination-token: A personal access token for the destination enterprise instance.

   • --destination-url: The URL of the destination enterprise instance.

   • --repo-name: The action repository to sync. This takes the format of owner/repository:destination_owner/destination_repository.

     • The above example syncs the docker/build-push-action repository to the synced-actions/docker-build-push-action repository on the destination {% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_server %} instance. You must create the organization named synced-actions on your enterprise instance before running the above command.
     • If you omit :destination_owner/destination_repository, the tool uses the original owner and repository name for your enterprise instance. Before running the command, you must create a new organization on your instance that matches the owner name of the action. Consider using a central organization to store the synced actions on your instance, as this means you will not need to create multiple new organizations if you sync actions from different owners.
     • You can sync multiple actions by replacing the --repo-name parameter with --repo-name-list or --repo-name-list-file. For more information, see the actions-sync README.

4. After the action repository is created on your enterprise instance, people in your enterprise can use the destination repository to reference the action in their workflows. For the example action shown above:

   uses: synced-actions/docker-build-push-action@v1
   

   For more information, see "Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions."