Integrating with GitHub

In this guide we will link a private GitHub repository to a Valohai project using a deploy key.

Alternative: Authenticate with GitHub Apps

You can also link private GitHub repositories through GitHub Apps authorization if you don’t wish to create keys and manage the secrets yourself. You will find Link to a GitHub repository in the project’s repository settings.

Requirements

• A private GitHub repository

• A Valohai project

• A tool that generates SSH keys. This guide uses ssh-keygen

• You’re familiar with Git for Data Science: What every data scientist should know about Git

Generate an SSH key pair

Use ssh-keygen to create a new SSH key pair.

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -N '' -f my-project-deploy-key

This will generate two files:

• my-project-deploy-key.pub is the public key you add to GitHub.

• my-project-deploy-key is the private key you add to Valohai.

Don’t include the keys in your version control

You should not include these keys in the version control. Anybody that gains access to the my-project-deploy-key file contents will have read access to your repository, so use appropriate caution.

Add the public key to GitHub

Find the my-project-deploy-key.pub file we generated in the last section, and it should contain one line that starts with ssh-rsa AAAA.... This line is the public key that we will be adding to GitHub.

Now go to your GitHub repository and navigate to the add deploy key page through Settings > Deploy keys > Add deploy key.

Add new deploy key

• Copy and paste the contents of my-project-deploy-key.pub into the Key field.

• Give the deploy key an identifying Title such as Valohai.

• Valohai doesn’t require write access, make sure that is off.

Add the private key to Valohai

Go to app.valohai.com and navigate to the repository settings in your Valohai Project through Settings > Repository.

To make sure you get the correct repository URL, open GitHub in another tab. On Github, navigate to Code page and press Clone or download.

Make sure you have Clone with SSH active on the popup window. If it reads Clone with HTTPS, click the Use SSH button next to the text.

Then copy the text field with git@github.com:<owner>/<repository>.git

Next paste the SSH URL (git@github.com:<owner>/<repository>.git) into the URL field.

On your local machine, find the my-project-deploy-key file (without the .pub extension) we generated before. It should contain multiple lines starting with -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- or something similar. The contents of this file are the private key we’ll be adding to Valohai. Copy and paste the contents of my-project-deploy-key into the SSH private key field.

After you click Save, Valohai links the GitHub repository to the project and automatically fetches your code.

After you add new commits to your GitHub repository, remember to press the Fetch repository to update the code in Valohai.