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Warning

Migrations are coming to VA GitHub. See the Migrations section for more information.

GHEC-US Limitations

Limitations of the GHEC-US Environment

For the most part GHEC-US is the same GitHub Enterprise Cloud product that VA has been using for some time, however there are a few features that are currently unavailable. The following unavailable features will have the most impact on the VA’s migrations to GHEC-US:

  • Maven Packages
  • App Marketplace and App Limitations
  • Codespaces
  • MacOS Actions Runners
  • Copilot Extensions and Metrics API

Maven Packages

Maven packages are not supported in GHEC-US. The tentative plan is to use the VA’s existing Nexus server instead of GitHub Packages for maven artifacts. We are working with the VA to expose Nexus to the internet, so that VA teams can use Nexus in both local development workflows and GitHub Actions. VA teams will need to transition all maven projects and CICD workflows to use Nexus instead of GitHub Packages for retrieving and publishing maven artifacts.

App Marketplace and App Limitations

GitHub Apps are fully supported in GHEC-US however the Marketplace is not available so GitHub Apps need to be installed and configured manually. Apps may also be incompatible with GHEC-US if they cannot be configured to send API requests to a custom hostname, or if they are dependent upon features or API behaviors that are not available in GHEC-US. The VA’s GHEC-US instance will have its own custom hostname va.ghe.com instead of github.com, and API requests will need to be sent to api.va.ghe.com instead of api.github.com. If any GitHub Apps are hardcoded to send requests to api.github.com and cannot be configured to use api.va.ghe.com instead, then those apps will be incompatible with GHEC-US until the code is updated (for VA custom apps) or the vendor provides an update (for third-party apps).

If VA teams are using mission critical third-party GitHub Apps and are concerned about the impact of potential incompatibilities with GHEC-US then we recommend to file a support request and provide the details such as which Apps are being used and which repositories they are installed in, and we will help determine whether those Apps are compatible.

Codespaces

Codespaces are not available in GHEC-US, and unfortunately there is no direct replacement or workaround. The VA is researching alternative virtual development environments but that effort is just beginning and is unlikely to provide an alternative during our migrations time period.

MacOS Actions Runners

GitHub-hosted macOS Actions runners are not available in GHEC-US. Our recommended workaround is to use self-hosted runners for the actions and workflows that require macOS, using AWS EC2 macOS VMs which we believe should be available to VA teams through VAEC. VA teams can configure their own repository self-hosted runners, and upon request the GitHub team can help configure organization self-hosted runners that can be shared across repositories.

Copilot Extensions and Metrics API

GitHub Copilot is just now being broadly rolled out to VA and we are not aware of any use of Copilot Extensions or the Copilot Metrics API, but it is worth mentioning that these features are not available in GHEC-US in case teams have plans to implement custom Copilot Extensions or use the Copilot Metrics API.