SBOMgen

Creating SBOMs Using The GitHub GH SBOM Utility

Introduction

This tutorial illustrates how to create SBOMs using the GitHub gh CLI sbom extension.

Requirements

GitHub gh CLI.

gh sbom plugin.

jq. (optional)

Installation

Installing GitHub gh CLI

Linux

Debian and Debian Based Distros e.g. Ubuntu

Run:

(type -p wget >/dev/null || (sudo apt update && sudo apt-get install wget -y)) \
&& sudo mkdir -p -m 755 /etc/apt/keyrings \
&& wget -qO- https://cli.github.com/packages/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null \
&& sudo chmod go+r /etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg \
&& echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg] https://cli.github.com/packages stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/github-cli.list > /dev/null \
&& sudo apt update \
&& sudo apt install gh -y

then run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install gh

Fedora and Fedora based Distros, e.g. Red Hat

Run:

sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(config-manager)'
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://cli.github.com/packages/rpm/gh-cli.repo
sudo dnf install gh

Windows

Run:

winget install --id GitHub.cli

or

choco install gh

or

scoop install gh

OSX

Run:

brew install gh

or

sudo port install gh

or

conda install gh --channel conda-forge

or

spack install gh

Installing gh sbom plugin

Run the command:

gh ext install advanced-security/gh-sbom

Verify install by running:

gh sbom -h

You should see the result:

Usage of <location-of-gh-sbom>:
  -c, --cyclonedx           Use CycloneDX SBOM format. Default is to use SPDX.
  -l, --license             Include license information from clearlydefined.io for CycloneDX format (SPDX always includes license information).
  -r, --repository string   Repository to query. Current directory used by default.
pflag: help requested

Usage

Navigate to a GitHub repository in question.

Run the command:

gh sbom

Default output is SPDX.

To create a more human readable output, run:

gh sbom | jq

For CycloneDX formatted outputs, run:

gh sbom -c | jq

These will generate JSON formatted and indented SBOMs printed to your terminal.

To save these outputs to a file, run:

gh sbom | jq > <sbom-file-name>

Notes

• When creating SBOMs in SPDX format, gh sbom may produce purls with the less common packages github and/or githubactions.

Example SBOM

The following section illustrates CycloneDX and SPDX JSON SBOMs of the GitHub GH SBOM codebase, created via GH SBOM.

gh-sbom cdx (json)

gh-sbom spdx (json)

References

• Cli. (n.d.). CLI/CLI: GitHub’s Official Command Line Tool. GitHub. https://github.com/cli/cli
• Gh-SBOM. (n.d.). Advanced-security/GH-sbom: Generate sboms with GH CLI. GitHub. https://github.com/advanced-security/gh-sbom

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