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Automatically update third party licenses during Dependabot PRs #11270
Description
Overview
With cli/cli lint process erring if 3rd party license information is not updated in #11047, Dependabot PRs will require maintainers to manually run make licenses.
Recently, @williammartin opened #11269 with the script/fix-dependabot-licenses.sh script for maintainers to run that will find all Dependabot PRs and attempt to fix them where the lint workflow failed. This script is a manual repair effort, however it is possible to use a GitHub Actions workflow to run the make license script for Dependabot PRs:
name: Dependabot fetch metadata on: pull_request permissions: pull-requests: write issues: write jobs: dependabot: runs-on: ubuntu-latest if: github.event.pull_request.user.login == 'dependabot[bot]' && github.repository == 'owner/my_repo' steps: - name: Dependabot metadata id: metadata uses: dependabot/fetch-metadata@d7267f607e9d3fb96fc2fbe83e0af444713e90b7 with: github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}" # The following properties are now available: # - steps.metadata.outputs.dependency-names # - steps.metadata.outputs.dependency-type # - steps.metadata.outputs.update-type
This issue is aimed at implementing GitHub Actions workflow changes that will automatically update third-party license source code and third-party-*.md reports, eliminating the need for maintainers to manually repair Dependabot PRs.
Note
To download the script/fix-dependabot-licenses.sh script, run the following command:
curl -o fix-dependabot-licenses.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cli/cli/26d70bfb7bcc0b41dbdd50bfc51f827f1a5ad4c4/script/fix-dependabot-licenses.shOr checkout the original PR:
gh pr checkout https://github.com/cli/cli/pull/11269Expected outcomes
- When Dependabot PRs are opened, automation attempts to regenerate and commit updated license information via
make licenses - When Dependabot PRs are updated, status checks pass without maintainer action outside of reviewing PR
Activity
andyfeller commentedon Jul 10, 2025
One of the concerns raised that might prevent this from being automatically fixed is how GitHub Actions status checks are triggered by pushes using the
secrets.GITHUB_TOKENautomatic token.This concern is related to Triggering a workflow from a workflow where GitHub Actions might not automatically re-run the status checks on the original PR for changes made by a different workflow:
In the event we cannot automatically fix this as described, then we will reopen and merge @williammartin work in #11269 as to reduce maintainer toil.
Regenerate third-party licenses on trunk pushes