This version of GitHub Enterprise Server will be discontinued on 2025-04-03. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise Server. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.
You can enable, configure, and disable code scanning for your enterprise. Code scanning allows users to scan code for vulnerabilities and errors.
Code scanning is available for the following repository types:
Code scanning is a feature that you use to analyze the code in a GitHub repository to find security vulnerabilities and coding errors. Any problems identified by the analysis are shown in your repository.
You can configure code scanning to run CodeQL analysis and third-party analysis. Code scanning also supports running analysis natively using GitHub Actions or externally using existing CI/CD infrastructure. The bullets below summarize the options available to users when you configure your GitHub Enterprise Server instance to allow code scanning using actions.
You can identify if your enterprise has a license for Advanced Security by reviewing your enterprise settings. For more information, see Enabling GitHub Advanced Security for your enterprise.
A license for GitHub Advanced Security, (see About billing for GitHub Advanced Security)
Code scanning enabled in the management console (see Enabling GitHub Advanced Security for your enterprise)
A VM or container for code scanning analysis to run in.
GitHub can run code scanning using a GitHub Actions workflow. First, you need to provision one or more self-hosted GitHub Actions runners in your environment. You can provision self-hosted runners at the repository, organization, or enterprise account level. See About self-hosted runners and Adding self-hosted runners.
You must ensure that Git is in the PATH variable on any self-hosted runners you use to run CodeQL actions.
Note
If you use CodeQL code scanning to analyze code written in Python in your enterprise, you must make sure that your self-hosted runner has Python 3 installed.
You can use Actions Runner Controller to create a dedicated runner scale set for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. See Deploying runner scale sets with Actions Runner Controller.
If you want to use actions to run code scanning on GitHub Enterprise Server, the actions must be available on your appliance.
The CodeQL action is included in your installation of GitHub Enterprise Server. If both GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12 and your GitHub Actions runner have access to the internet, the action will automatically download the CodeQL 2.20.3 bundle required to perform analysis. Alternatively, you can use a synchronization tool to make the latest released version of the CodeQL analysis bundle available locally. See Configuring CodeQL analysis on a server without internet access below.
You can also make third-party actions available to users for code scanning, by setting up GitHub Connect. See Configuring code scanning for your appliance below.
If the server on which you are running GitHub Enterprise Server is not connected to the internet, and you want to allow users to enable CodeQL code scanning for their repositories, you must use the CodeQL action sync tool to copy the CodeQL analysis bundle from GitHub.com to your server. The tool, and details of how to use it, are available at https://github.com/github/codeql-action-sync-tool.
If you configure the CodeQL action sync tool, you can use it to sync the latest releases of the CodeQL action and associated CodeQL analysis bundle. These are compatible with GitHub Enterprise Server.
If you don't want to use GitHub Actions, you should run code scanning using the CodeQL CLI.
The CodeQL CLI is a command-line tool that you use to analyze codebases on any machine, including a third-party CI/CD system. See