`validate-actions` Action

Purpose: Verify every action a repository uses is on the ASF Infra approved list

ASF Infra only allows GitHub Actions workflows in apache/* repositories to use third-party actions that appear on the approved list maintained in apache/infrastructure-actions. This action scans the repository's workflow files and fails when any uses: entry does not comply with that policy, so a dependabot or renovate bump to an action version that ASF has not (yet) approved is caught in the pull request rather than at run time.

It is a port of the validateActions Gradle task from grails-core so that any repository can use it without a Gradle build.

Policy

For every uses: entry in every *.yml / *.yaml file directly inside the workflows directory:

Local composite actions (./..., ../...) and docker:// images are implicitly trusted.
Actions under the actions/*, github/* or apache/* namespaces are auto-approved.
Any other action must appear in approved_patterns.yml, either as an @* (any version) entry or with a full 40-character commit SHA that is on the list. A tag or branch reference for a SHA-only entry is a violation.
A SHA-pinned action should carry a trailing # vX.Y.Z comment that matches the tag ASF recorded for that SHA in actions.yml. A missing or mismatched comment produces a warning only.

Violations are reported as GitHub error annotations against the offending file and line, summarised in the job summary, and fail the action. The approved list is fetched on every run, so a scheduled run catches ASF delisting a previously approved SHA.

Inputs

workflows-dir - optional directory containing the workflow files, relative to the repository root. Defaults to .github/workflows.
approved-patterns-url - optional URL of the approved_patterns.yml allowlist. Defaults to the copy in apache/infrastructure-actions.
actions-url - optional URL of the actions.yml SHA-to-tag mapping. Defaults to the copy in apache/infrastructure-actions.

The URL inputs exist so the action can be pointed at a mirror or a test fixture. Production usage should leave them at their defaults.

Requirements

Requires contents: read so the workflow files can be checked out.
Requires outbound HTTPS access to raw.githubusercontent.com to fetch the approved list.

Example Usage

Run on every change to the workflow files, on a weekly schedule to catch upstream delisting, and on demand:

name: "Validate GitHub Actions"
on:
  push:
    paths:
      - '.github/workflows/**'
  pull_request:
    paths:
      - '.github/workflows/**'
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 6 * * 1' # weekly Monday 06:00 UTC - catches ASF delisting a pinned SHA
  workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
  contents: read
jobs:
  validate:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: "📥 Checkout repository"
        uses: actions/checkout@3d3c42e5aac5ba805825da76410c181273ba90b1 # v7.0.1
      - name: "🔎 Validate Actions against the ASF approved list"
        uses: apache/grails-github-actions/validate-actions@asf

Validating a non-standard workflows directory: