A GitHub Action for GitHub-native automated handling of contributor license agreement signatures. This action enables developers to self-sign a CLA without having to run external services for a separate system. The Action handles logic and stores signatures either in the same repository being protected or in a central repository that all protected projects can read and write signatures from.
- (De)-Centralized Signature Storage, choose whether repositories store signatures independently or use one central signature file.
- Fully integrated GitHub Action, no external services required.
- No dedicated UI, simply uses comments in Pull Requests.
- Contributors can sign the CLA by just posting a Pull Request comment.
- Signatures will be stored in a file for auditing.
- Optionally store signatures on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Signatures are stored in an easy-to-parse JSON structure either in the same repo running the GitHub Action or in an alternate repo that you can configure.
name: "CLA Signature Bot"
on:
issue_comment:
types: [created]
pull_request:
types: [opened,closed,synchronize]
jobs:
CLABot:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: "CLA Signature Bot"
uses: roblox/cla-assistant@2.0.0
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
with:
path-to-signatures: 'signatures/version1/cla.json'
url-to-cladocument: 'https://link/to/your/legal/CLA/document/of/choice'
# This branch can't have protections, commits are made directly to the specified branch.
branch: 'master'
whitelist: githubuser_example,anotherGitHubuser,bot
blockchain-storage-flag: false
CLA action workflow will be triggered on all Pull Request opened, synchronize, closed.
When the CLA workflow is triggered on pull request closed event, it will lock the Pull Request conversation after the Pull Request merge so that the contributors cannot modify or delete the signature comments later.
If your signature is not on file and your account isn't in the whitelist, the CLA Bot will provide instructions on what to do in the PR Conversation and block the PR from merging until all authors of commits sign the CLA.
The CLA Signature Action will comment on the pull request asking for authors to sign the CLA. Commit authors will then need to use their GitHub accounts to write "I have read the CLA Document and I hereby sign the CLA" in the Pull Request comments to sign the CLA.
Add a comment with the requested signature to your pull request to sign the CLA. The action will execute again and automatically mark your signature in the CLA signatures file. When all authors have signed the CLA the PR check will pass.
The whitelist parameter is a comma-seprated list of accounts which should not be considered for CLA signature verification. These accounts will completely bypass the signature process, and if all authors are whitelisted in a PR the CLA Signature Action won't even comment on the PR.
This feature is particularly useful for other bot accounts, such as dependabot or greenkeeper. For example, dependabot-preview[bot],greenkeeper[bot] will whitelist both of those bot accounts.
Wildcards are accepted and will be treated as a regex .* character, so you can whitelist ranges of accounts. Use caution with wildcards to avoid whitelisting actual human contributors.
Some common accounts you may want to whitelist:
dependabot[bot]- This is the account GitHub will use to open Dependabot fixes on your account.- Your personal account - Since you'll be opening the PR to add it you'll need to either sign the CLA or just add yourself to the whitelist.
The CLA Signature Bot has the option to additionally store the signatures on the Ethereum Blockchain. To use this feature just set the blockchain-storage-flag: true. A detailed description on integrating with the Ethereum Blockchain can be found here. The original implementation of this feature is thanks to @FabianRiewe.
| Name | Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|
GITHUB_TOKEN |
Required | Used for interacting with the local repository, such as adding comments to PRs. Does not need to be manually specified in Repository Secrets, read more. Must be in the form of GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} |
| Name | Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|
url-to-cladocument |
Required | The full URL of your CLA document. The CLA bot will link to this document in a Pull Request comment, so make sure it's public. Could be a gist link, or a link to a file in the same repo. |
path-to-signatures |
optional | Path to the signature file in the repository. Default is ./signatures/cla.json. |
branch |
optional | Repository branch to store the signature file. Default is master |
whitelist |
optional | Comma-separated list of accounts to ignore. Example: user1,user2,bot* |
blockchain-storage-flag |
optional | Whether to store the Contributor's signature data in the Ethereum blockchain. May be true or false. Default is false. |
blockchain-webhook-endpoint |
optional | The URL to post the blockchain request to. Can be used when running your own blockchain-services docker container. |
use-remote-repo |
optional | Whether to use an alternate repository for storing the signature file than the one running the workflow. If true the remote repo name and PAT must be provided. Default is false. |
remote-repo-name |
optional | The name of the alternate repository to store the signature file. Must be in owner/repo-name format, ex: roblox/cla-assistant. Mandatory if use-remote-repo is true. |
remote-repo-pat |
optional | A Personal Access Token with permission to write to the remote repo. If the repo is private it must have repo:private scope. Mandatory if use-remote-repo is true. |
Contributor License Agreement Signature Bot Copyright (c) 2020 Roblox Corporation. All rights reserved.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Provided with ♥ by Roblox.
This project is an extension of the original CLA-Assistant-Lite project created by SAP SE and especially Akshay Iyyadurai Balasundaram . Our thanks go out to them for the idea and initial implementation that was rewritten into this system. The original project can be found at https://github.com/cla-assistant/github-action.