Chapter 2. Enabling the GitHub authentication provider

GitHub Apps are generally preferred to OAuth apps because they use fine-grained permissions, give more control over which repositories the application can access, and use short-lived tokens. For more information, see GitHub Apps overview in the GitHub documentation.

In a GitHub App, you configure the allowed scopes as part of that application, therefore, you must verify the scope that your plugins require. The scope information is available in the plugin README files.

To add GitHub authentication, complete the steps in Registering a GitHub App on the GitHub website.

Use the following examples to enter the information about your production environment into the required fields on the Register new GitHub App page:

To add GitHub authentication for Developer Hub, you must configure the GitHub App in your app-config.yaml file.

The GitHub authentication provider uses the following configuration keys:

To configure the GitHub App, add the provider configuration to your app-config.yaml file under the root auth configuration. For example:

auth:
 environment: production
 providers:
   github:
     production:
       clientId: ${GITHUB_APP_CLIENT_ID}
       clientSecret: ${GITHUB_APP_CLIENT_SECRET}
       ## uncomment if using GitHub Enterprise
       # enterpriseInstanceUrl: ${GITHUB_URL}

To add the provider to the front end, add the sign in configuration to your app-config.yaml file. For example:

signInPage: github