Configure Multiple AWS Credential Profiles for GitHub Actions

Drop-in replacement for aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials with additional features to configure multiple AWS roles as AWS profiles.

The primary reason this action exists is to address using multiple AWS Roles at the same time in GitHub Actions. The official action is not sufficient for multiple account usage as it only sets one set of AWS environment variables at a time. Trying to reuse the action simply overwrites the environment variables with the new credentials.

This action uses the official aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4 under the hood. Almost all inputs of the original action are supported. The main difference is that the profile input is required. This action will create the ~/.aws/config and ~/.aws/credentials files with the specified profile name (can be overridden with AWS_CONFIG_FILE & AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE, details below).

Additional Inputs

The below inputs are in additional to the official action inputs are:

Input Name	Description	Required	default values
profile	Name of the profile to be created	false	"default"
only-profile	This will unset the AWS env vars to empty string. Necessary for using profiles	false	false
whoami	Run additional aws sts get-caller-identity to check if the profile is working	true	false

Unsupported Inputs

Input Name	Description
output-credentials	This is set to true so that the next steps in this action can create the profile. The actual env vars are then overridden with a dummy value

Outputs

Output Name	Description
aws-account-id	The AWS account ID for the provided credentials
aws-access-key-id	The AWS access key ID for the provided credentials
aws-secret-access-key	The AWS secret access key for the provided credentials
aws-session-token	The AWS session token for the provided credentials
profile	Name of the profile that was created

Usage

env:
  PROFILE_ROLE_1: PROFILE_ROLE_1
  PROFILE_ROLE_2: PROFILE_ROLE_2

jobs:
  assume-multiple-roles:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read # This is required for actions/checkout
      id-token: write # This is required for requesting the token from AWS STS
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repo
        id: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Configure AWS credentials ROLE 1
        id: configure-aws-credentials-role-1
        uses: Moulick/configure-multiple-aws-roles@v4
        with:
          role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/role-1
          role-session-name: GithubActions-${{ env.REPO_NAME }}-${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.run_id }}
          aws-region: ${{ env.AWS_DEFAULT_REGION }}
          profile: ${{ env.PROFILE_ROLE_1 }}
          only-profile: true
          whoami: true

      - name: Configure AWS credentials ROLE 2
        id: configure-aws-credentials-role-2
        uses: Moulick/configure-multiple-aws-roles@v4
        with:
          role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/role-2
          role-session-name: GithubActions-${{ env.REPO_NAME }}-${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.run_id }}
          aws-region: ${{ env.AWS_DEFAULT_REGION }}
          profile: ${{ env.PROFILE_ROLE_2 }}
          only-profile: true
          whoami: true

      - name: Check AWS credentials
        id: check-aws-credentials
        run: |
          aws sts get-caller-identity --profile ${{ env.PROFILE_ROLE_1 }}
          aws sts get-caller-identity --profile ${{ env.PROFILE_ROLE_2 }}

Custom location for AWS config and credentials files

If you need to use a custom location for the profile files, you can use the AWS_CONFIG_FILE and AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE environment variables.

This sometimes becomes necessary for actions running in docker containers, where the default location is different that what the AWS SDK expects.

Important

The -v ${{ github.workspace }}:/github/workspace/ is necessary to mount the workspace into the docker container. The AWS_CONFIG_FILE and AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE are set to the same path as the mounted workspace.

env:
  PROFILE_TEST: test
  AWS_CONFIG_FILE: ${{ github.workspace }}/.aws/config # Custom path that is passed on to docker container /home/runner/work/<OWNER>/<REPO_NAME>/.aws/config
  AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE: ${{ github.workspace }}/.aws/credentials # Similar to above

jobs:
  test_new_action:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repo
        id: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Configure AWS credentials role test
        id: configure-aws-credentials-role-test
        uses: Moulick/configure-multiple-aws-roles@v4
        with:
          role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/role-test
          role-session-name: GithubActions-${{ env.REPO_NAME }}-${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.run_id }}
          aws-region: ${{ env.AWS_DEFAULT_REGION }}
          profile: ${{ env.PROFILE_TEST }}
          only-profile: true
          whoami: true

      - run: aws s3 ls --profile ${{ env.PROFILE_TEST }}

      # Example of using the profile with terragrunt
      - name: Terragrunt plan
        id: terragrunt-plan
        uses: gruntwork-io/terragrunt-action@v2
        env:
          AWS_CONFIG_FILE: /github/workspace/.aws/config # And this is the place the AWS config file ends up mounted
          AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE: /github/workspace/.aws/credentials
          AWS_PROFILE: ${{ env.PROFILE_TEST }}
          INPUT_PRE_EXEC_1: |
            unset AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY AWS_SESSION_TOKEN

      # Example with generic Docker image
      # Notice the workspace mount and both the env vars, that is the place the AWS config file ends up mounted
      - name: use in docker
        id: use-in-docker
        uses: addnab/docker-run-action@v3
        with:
          image: amazon/aws-cli
          options: -v ${{ github.workspace }}:/github/workspace/ -e AWS_CONFIG_FILE=/github/workspace/.aws/config -e AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE=/github/workspace/.aws/credentials
          run: |
            if ! [ -f ${AWS_CONFIG_FILE} ]; then echo "${AWS_CONFIG_FILE} does not exist." fi
            if ! [ -f  ${AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE} ]; then echo " ${AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE} does not exist." fi

            aws sts get-caller-identity --profile ${{ env.PROFILE_TEST }}

Unset AWS Environment variables

There are two problems

1. GitHub actions do not support unsetting and env var once it has been set, you cannot even set it to "". Aka echo "AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=" >> $GITHUB_ENV does not work. Read more here actions/runner#1126
2. AWS SDKs prefers using the AWS_* env variables over profile.

This necessitates that the three env vars need to be unset in every step that you run. Below can be used for linux/macos runners.

unset AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY AWS_SESSION_TOKEN