migrating-from-circleci-with-github-actions-importer.md

title	intro	versions	type	topics	shortTitle	redirect_from
Migrating from CircleCI with GitHub Actions Importer	Learn how to use {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} to automate the migration of your CircleCI pipelines to {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %}.	fpt ghec ghes * * *	tutorial	Migration CI CD	CircleCI migration	/actions/migrating-to-github-actions/automated-migrations/migrating-from-circleci-with-github-actions-importer

Legal notice

About migrating from CircleCI with GitHub Actions Importer

The instructions below will guide you through configuring your environment to use {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} to migrate CircleCI pipelines to {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %}.

Prerequisites

• A CircleCI account or organization with projects and pipelines that you want to convert to {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} workflows.
• Access to create a CircleCI personal API token for your account or organization. {% data reusables.actions.actions-importer-prerequisites %}

Limitations

There are some limitations when migrating from CircleCI to {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} with {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %}:

• Automatic caching in between jobs of different workflows is not supported.
• The audit command is only supported when you use a CircleCI organization account. The dry-run and migrate commands can be used with a CircleCI organization or user account.

Manual tasks

Certain CircleCI constructs must be migrated manually. These include:

• Contexts
• Project-level environment variables
• Unknown job properties
• Unknown orbs

Installing the {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} CLI extension

{% data reusables.actions.installing-actions-importer %}

Configuring credentials

The configure CLI command is used to set required credentials and options for {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} when working with CircleCI and {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %}.

1. Create a {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} {% data variables.product.pat_v1 %}. For more information, see AUTOTITLE.

   Your token must have the workflow scope.

   After creating the token, copy it and save it in a safe location for later use.

2. Create a CircleCI personal API token. For more information, see Managing API Tokens in the CircleCI documentation.

   After creating the token, copy it and save it in a safe location for later use.

3. In your terminal, run the {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} configure CLI command:

   gh actions-importer configure

   The configure command will prompt you for the following information:

   • For "Which CI providers are you configuring?", use the arrow keys to select CircleCI, press Space to select it, then press Enter.
   • For "{% data variables.product.pat_generic_caps %} for GitHub", enter the value of the {% data variables.product.pat_v1 %} that you created earlier, and press Enter.
   • For "Base url of the GitHub instance", {% ifversion ghes %}enter the URL for {% data variables.location.product_location_enterprise %}, and press Enter.{% else %}press Enter to accept the default value (https://github.com).{% endif %}
   • For "{% data variables.product.pat_generic_caps %} for CircleCI", enter the value for the CircleCI personal API token that you created earlier, and press Enter.
   • For "Base url of the CircleCI instance", press Enter to accept the default value (https://circleci.com).
   • For "CircleCI organization name", enter the name for your CircleCI organization, and press Enter.

   An example of the configure command is shown below:

   $ gh actions-importer configure ✔ Which CI providers are you configuring?: CircleCI Enter the following values (leave empty to omit): ✔ {% data variables.product.pat_generic_caps %} for GitHub: *************** ✔ Base url of the GitHub instance: https://github.com ✔ {% data variables.product.pat_generic_caps %} for CircleCI: ******************** ✔ Base url of the CircleCI instance: https://circleci.com ✔ CircleCI organization name: mycircleciorganization Environment variables successfully updated.

4. In your terminal, run the {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} update CLI command to connect to {% data variables.product.prodname_registry %} {% data variables.product.prodname_container_registry %} and ensure that the container image is updated to the latest version:

   gh actions-importer update

   The output of the command should be similar to below:

   Updating ghcr.io/actions-importer/cli:latest... ghcr.io/actions-importer/cli:latest up-to-date

Perform an audit of CircleCI

You can use the audit command to get a high-level view of all projects in a CircleCI organization.

The audit command performs the following steps:

1. Fetches all of the projects defined in a CircleCI organization.
2. Converts each pipeline to its equivalent {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} workflow.
3. Generates a report that summarizes how complete and complex of a migration is possible with {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %}.

Running the audit command

To perform an audit of a CircleCI organization, run the following command in your terminal:

gh actions-importer audit circle-ci --output-dir tmp/audit

Inspecting the audit results

{% data reusables.actions.gai-inspect-audit %}

Forecast potential {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} usage

You can use the forecast command to forecast potential {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} usage by computing metrics from completed pipeline runs in CircleCI.

Running the forecast command

To perform a forecast of potential {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} usage, run the following command in your terminal. By default, {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} includes the previous seven days in the forecast report.

gh actions-importer forecast circle-ci --output-dir tmp/forecast_reports

Inspecting the forecast report

The forecast_report.md file in the specified output directory contains the results of the forecast.

Listed below are some key terms that can appear in the forecast report:

• The job count is the total number of completed jobs.

• The pipeline count is the number of unique pipelines used.

• Execution time describes the amount of time a runner spent on a job. This metric can be used to help plan for the cost of {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %}-hosted runners.

  This metric is correlated to how much you should expect to spend in {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %}. This will vary depending on the hardware used for these minutes. You can use the {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} pricing calculator to estimate the costs.

• Queue time metrics describe the amount of time a job spent waiting for a runner to be available to execute it.

• Concurrent jobs metrics describe the amount of jobs running at any given time. This metric can be used to define the number of runners you should configure.

Additionally, these metrics are defined for each queue of runners in CircleCI. This is especially useful if there is a mix of hosted or self-hosted runners, or high or low spec machines, so you can see metrics specific to different types of runners.

Perform a dry-run migration of a CircleCI pipeline

You can use the dry-run command to convert a CircleCI pipeline to an equivalent {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} workflow. A dry-run creates the output files in a specified directory, but does not open a pull request to migrate the pipeline.

To perform a dry run of migrating your CircleCI project to {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %}, run the following command in your terminal, replacing my-circle-ci-project with the name of your CircleCI project.

gh actions-importer dry-run circle-ci --output-dir tmp/dry-run --circle-ci-project my-circle-ci-project

You can view the logs of the dry run and the converted workflow files in the specified output directory.

{% data reusables.actions.gai-custom-transformers-rec %}

Perform a production migration of a CircleCI pipeline

You can use the migrate command to convert a CircleCI pipeline and open a pull request with the equivalent {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %} workflow.

Running the migrate command

To migrate a CircleCI pipeline to {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %}, run the following command in your terminal, replacing the target-url value with the URL for your {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} repository, and my-circle-ci-project with the name of your CircleCI project.

gh actions-importer migrate circle-ci --target-url https://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo --output-dir tmp/migrate --circle-ci-project my-circle-ci-project

The command's output includes the URL to the pull request that adds the converted workflow to your repository. An example of a successful output is similar to the following:

$ gh actions-importer migrate circle-ci --target-url https://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo --output-dir tmp/migrate --circle-ci-project my-circle-ci-project [2022-08-20 22:08:20] Logs: 'tmp/migrate/log/actions-importer-20220916-014033.log' [2022-08-20 22:08:20] Pull request: 'https://github.com/octo-org/octo-repo/pull/1'

{% data reusables.actions.gai-inspect-pull-request %}

Reference

This section contains reference information on environment variables, optional arguments, and supported syntax when using {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} to migrate from CircleCI.

Using environment variables

{% data reusables.actions.gai-config-environment-variables %}

{% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} uses the following environment variables to connect to your CircleCI instance:

• GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN: The {% data variables.product.pat_v1 %} used to create pull requests with a converted workflow (requires repo and workflow scopes).
• GITHUB_INSTANCE_URL: The URL to the target {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} instance (for example, https://github.com).
• CIRCLE_CI_ACCESS_TOKEN: The CircleCI personal API token used to authenticate with your CircleCI instance.
• CIRCLE_CI_INSTANCE_URL: The URL to the CircleCI instance (for example, https://circleci.com). If the variable is left unset, https://circleci.com is used as the default value.
• CIRCLE_CI_ORGANIZATION: The organization name of your CircleCI instance.
• CIRCLE_CI_PROVIDER: The location where your pipeline's source file is stored (such as github). Currently, only {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} is supported.
• CIRCLE_CI_SOURCE_GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN (Optional): The {% data variables.product.pat_v1 %} used to authenticate with your source {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} instance (requires repo scope). If not provided, the value of GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN is used instead.
• CIRCLE_CI_SOURCE_GITHUB_INSTANCE_URL (Optional): The URL to the source {% data variables.product.prodname_dotcom %} instance. If not provided, the value of GITHUB_INSTANCE_URL is used instead.

These environment variables can be specified in a .env.local file that is loaded by {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} when it is run.

Optional arguments

{% data reusables.actions.gai-optional-arguments-intro %}

--source-file-path

You can use the --source-file-path argument with the forecast, dry-run, or migrate subcommands.

By default, {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} fetches pipeline contents from source control. The --source-file-path argument tells {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} to use the specified source file path instead.

For example:

gh actions-importer dry-run circle-ci --output-dir ./output/ --source-file-path ./path/to/.circleci/config.yml

If you would like to supply multiple source files when running the forecast subcommand, you can use pattern matching in the file path value. For example, gh forecast --source-file-path ./tmp/previous_forecast/jobs/*.json supplies {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} with any source files that match the ./tmp/previous_forecast/jobs/*.json file path.

--config-file-path

You can use the --config-file-path argument with the audit, dry-run, and migrate subcommands.

By default, {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} fetches pipeline contents from source control. The --config-file-path argument tells {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} to use the specified source files instead.

The --config-file-path argument can also be used to specify which repository a converted composite action should be migrated to.

Audit example

In this example, {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} uses the specified YAML configuration file to perform an audit.

gh actions-importer audit circle-ci --output-dir ./output/ --config-file-path ./path/to/circle-ci/config.yml

To audit a CircleCI instance using a config file, the config file must be in the following format, and each repository_slug must be unique:

source_files: - repository_slug: circle-org-name/circle-project-namepath: path/to/.circleci/config.yml - repository_slug: circle-org-name/some-other-circle-project-namepath: path/to/.circleci/config.yml

Dry run example

In this example, {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} uses the specified YAML configuration file as the source file to perform a dry run.

The pipeline is selected by matching the repository_slug in the config file to the value of the --circle-ci-organization and --circle-ci-project options. The path is then used to pull the specified source file.

gh actions-importer dry-run circle-ci --circle-ci-project circle-org-name/circle-project-name --output-dir ./output/ --config-file-path ./path/to/circle-ci/config.yml

Specify the repository of converted composite actions

{% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} uses the YAML file provided to the --config-file-path argument to determine the repository that converted composite actions are migrated to.

To begin, you should run an audit without the --config-file-path argument:

gh actions-importer audit circle-ci --output-dir ./output/

The output of this command will contain a file named config.yml that contains a list of all the composite actions that were converted by {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %}. For example, the config.yml file may have the following contents:

composite_actions: - name: my-composite-action.ymltarget_url: https://github.com/octo-org/octo-reporef: main

You can use this file to specify which repository and ref a reusable workflow or composite action should be added to. You can then use the --config-file-path argument to provide the config.yml file to {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %}. For example, you can use this file when running a migrate command to open a pull request for each unique repository defined in the config file:

gh actions-importer migrate circle-ci --circle-ci-project my-project-name --output-dir output/ --config-file-path config.yml --target-url https://github.com/my-org/my-repo

--include-from

You can use the --include-from argument with the audit subcommand.

The --include-from argument specifies a file that contains a line-delimited list of repositories to include in the audit of a CircleCI organization. Any repositories that are not included in the file are excluded from the audit.

For example:

gh actions-importer audit circle-ci --output-dir ./output/ --include-from repositories.txt

The file supplied for this parameter must be a line-delimited list of repositories, for example:

repository_one repository_two repository_three 

Supported syntax for CircleCI pipelines

The following table shows the type of properties that {% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} is currently able to convert.

CircleCI Pipelines	GitHub Actions	Status
cron triggers	on.schedule	Supported
environment	env jobs.<job_id>.env jobs.<job_id>.steps.env	Supported
executors	runs-on	Supported
jobs	jobs	Supported
job	jobs.<job_id> jobs.<job_id>.name	Supported
matrix	jobs.<job_id>.strategy jobs.<job_id>.strategy.matrix	Supported
parameters	env workflow-dispatch.inputs	Supported
steps	jobs.<job_id>.steps	Supported
when, unless	jobs.<job_id>.if	Supported
triggers	on	Supported
executors	container services	Partially Supported
orbs	actions	Partially Supported
executors	self hosted runners	Unsupported
setup	Not applicable	Unsupported
version	Not applicable	Unsupported

For more information about supported CircleCI concept and orb mappings, see the github/gh-actions-importer repository.

Environment variable mapping

{% data variables.product.prodname_actions_importer %} uses the mapping in the table below to convert default CircleCI environment variables to the closest equivalent in {% data variables.product.prodname_actions %}.

CircleCI	GitHub Actions
CI	{% raw %}$CI{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_BRANCH	{% raw %}${{ github.ref }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_JOB	{% raw %}${{ github.job }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_PR_NUMBER	{% raw %}${{ github.event.number }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_PR_REPONAME	{% raw %}${{ github.repository }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_PROJECT_REPONAME	{% raw %}${{ github.repository }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_SHA1	{% raw %}${{ github.sha }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_TAG	{% raw %}${{ github.ref }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_USERNAME	{% raw %}${{ github.actor }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_WORKFLOW_ID	{% raw %}${{ github.run_number }}{% endraw %}
CIRCLE_WORKING_DIRECTORY	{% raw %}${{ github.workspace }}{% endraw %}
<< pipeline.id >>	{% raw %}${{ github.workflow }}{% endraw %}
<< pipeline.number >>	{% raw %}${{ github.run_number }}{% endraw %}
<< pipeline.project.git_url >>	$GITHUB_SERVER_URL/$GITHUB_REPOSITORY
<< pipeline.project.type >>	github
<< pipeline.git.tag >>	{% raw %}${{ github.ref }}{% endraw %}
<< pipeline.git.branch >>	{% raw %}${{ github.ref }}{% endraw %}
<< pipeline.git.revision >>	{% raw %}${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }}{% endraw %}
<< pipeline.git.base_revision >>	{% raw %}${{ github.event.pull_request.base.sha }}{% endraw %}

Legal notice

{% data reusables.actions.actions-importer-legal-notice %}