The OpenSAFELY Setup Action

This is a GitHub Action to provide some basic setup in a GitHub workflow.

It is designed to perform some basic setup and install some tools that are common across many of our OpenSAFELY jobs.

Usage

See action.yml for full details.

Example with pip dependencies

...

jobs:
  my-job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04

    steps:
      - uses: "opensafely-core/setup-action@v1"
        with:
          python-version: "3.10"
          cache-dependency-path: "requirements.*.txt"
          install-just: true

Example with uv dependencies and uv-managed python versions

...

jobs:
  my-job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - uses: "opensafely-core/setup-action@v1"
        with:
          install-just: true
          install-uv: true
          cache: uv

Action inputs

Name	Description	Required	Default
python-version	The Python version to use. A value is required in order to install Python	no	-
cache	If dependencies should be cached, use this parameter to specify the package manager. Supported values: pip, pipenv, poetry, uv. Set to null to disable dependency caching. Only applicable if using python-version to install Python.	no	pip
cache-dependency-path	The path to dependency files whose dependencies should be cached. Only applicable if using python-version to install Python.	no	requirements.*.txt
install-uv	If true, this installs uv	no	false
install-just	If true, this installs Just	no	false

Tip

python-version is only required if you need to > install a system python. If using uv, you can omit python-version and allow uv to manage python versions.

Releasing a new version

Existing workflow files reference this repo using the v1 tag. The tag is automatically updated on merges to the main branch via the tag-release workflow. It can also be updated manually with:

make tag-release

If you make breaking changes, update the Makefile command to use a new version tag.