Github Actions and git clone issue - terraform

Question

Having some problems using git clone from within a Github Actions, i get the following no matter what i try:
The code that fails in my main.yml:
jobs:
terraform:
name: 'Terraform with Github Actions!'
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: 'Login to Azure'
uses: azure/login#v1
with:
creds: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CREDENTIALS }}
- name: 'Checkout'
uses: actions/checkout#master
- name: 'Preparing blueprint-environment'
run: |
snip
git clone git#github.com:ourcompany/whateverrepo.git
Error message:
git#github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
Ive seen many posts on adding ssh-keys, but thats locally, not in a ubuntu-release running from Github actions - what am i missing here? I cant generate ssh-keys and add the private key on the fly to the Github repo-settings, how can i fix this?

Answer 1

If you need to checkout two repositories I would recommend using checkout again to a relative path. See the documentation to checkout multiple repos side by side. You may need to use a repo scoped Personal Access Token (PAT)
- name: 'Checkout'
uses: actions/checkout#v2
- name: 'Preparing blueprint-environment'
uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
repository: ourcompany/whateverrepo
path: whateverrepo
If it's really necessary, Deploy keys can be used to clone a repository via SSH.
Create a new SSH key pair for your repository. Do not set a passphrase.
Copy the contents of the public key (.pub file) to a new repository deploy key and check the box to "Allow write access."
Add a secret to the repository containing the entire contents of the private key.
As shown in the example below, configure actions/checkout to use the deploy key you have created.
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
ssh-key: ${{ secrets.SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }}