Quickstart for GitHub Actions Runners

Below is a quickstart guide for connecting your Depot organization to GitHub and configuring your GitHub Actions to use Depot managed runners.

Create an organization

If you have not already created an Organization, you will need to create one before proceeding. Organizations are the top-level entity in Depot. They typically represent a single company or team. Billing details are attached to an organization.

1. Login to your Depot account to get to your list of organizations
2. Click on the Create Organization button
3. Enter an organization name
4. Click Create organization

Connect to GitHub

To configure Depot GitHub Action Runners, you must connect to your GitHub organization and install the Depot GitHub App. You can do this from the GitHub Actions tab in your organization's Depot dashboard.

Approval for private repositories

Some GitHub organizations are configured such that an Organization Administrator must approve the new Depot GitHub app before jobs can run on Depot runners. You can confirm your app is active and approved inside of Depot in the GitHub Actions tab.

Permissions for public repositories

If you're going to use Depot runners with public repositories, you will need to update your Actions runner group to allow runners to be used in public repositories. You can find this setting in the Actions section in your GitHub organization settings: github.com/organizations/<your-org>/settings/actions/runner-groups.

Configure your GitHub Actions workflow

Once Depot is connected to your GitHub organization and the application is approved, you can configure your GitHub Actions to use the runners by specifying the runs-on key in your workflow file.

jobs:
  build:
    name: Build
-    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
+    runs-on: depot-ubuntu-22.04
    steps:
      ...

Depot supported labels

Depot runners are configured by specifying any one of the labels below for Intel runners:

Arm runners are now available in beta and can be specified with the following labels:

Note: We also support the depot-ubuntu-latest-<cpus> alias if you want to use the latest Ubuntu version.

View GitHub Actions jobs

After configuring your GitHub Actions workflow to use Depot runners, you can view the jobs that have run on Depot runners in your organization's GitHub Actions tab.

View GitHub Actions usage

Once you've started running GitHub Actions jobs on Depot runners, you can view the usage information in your organization's Usage tab. This includes the number of jobs, total job time, success and errors, build time, and cache storage used.