Refusing to Allow an OAuth App To Create or Update Workflow

Problem

I recently attempted to push some commits up to GitHub. One of the recent commits included a newly created GitHub Actions Workflow file. For those of you who are not familiar with workflow files, when they are included in your repository, GitHub will perform the actions in those files when certain conditions are met, like pushing commits to main branch.

Error Message

This is the error message that I received when attempting to push the commit with the new workflow file.

almostengineer@aeoffice:~/trafficpi$ git push origin cicdrelease
Enumerating objects: 103, done.
Counting objects: 100% (103/103), done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (60/60), done.
Writing objects: 100% (72/72), 10.04 KiB | 1.43 MiB/s, done.
Total 72 (delta 44), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (44/44), completed with 17 local objects.
To https://github.com/almostengr/trafficpi.git
 ! [remote rejected] cicdrelease -> cicdrelease (refusing to allow an OAuth App to create or update workflow `.github/workflows/release.yaml.old` without `workflow` scope)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/almostengr/trafficpi.git'

This message does not tell you how to address it. However, I did do some research and figured out how to address it. Continue reading.

Early in 2021 or late 2020, GitHub started showing messages about how they would stop allowing some features to work with commits that were pushed via HTTPS protocol. I do not recall why they chose to stop allowing this from being done, but it probably has something to do with security.

Solution

Update Remotes

To fix this problem, you will need to update your remotes to point to the SSH path of the repository instead of using the HTTPS path of the repository.

Before I made the update, the remote to my repository source was

almostengineer@aeoffice:~/trafficpi$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/almostengr/trafficpi.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/almostengr/trafficpi.git (push)

Then I ran the command to update the repository source. To get the SSH remote path, go to the repository page, click the green "Code" button, select the "SSH" option, and then copy the entire path from the textbox. Then use it in the example command below:

almostengineer@aeoffice:~/trafficpi$ git remote set-url origin git@github.com:almostengr/trafficpi.git

If the command above has been done correctly, then run git remote -v and you should see the updated path as the destination of the remote.

almostengineer@aeoffice:~/trafficpi$ git remote -v
origin  git@github.com:almostengr/trafficpi.git (fetch)
origin  git@github.com:almostengr/trafficpi.git (push)

Final Push

Once you have completed the above step, then you can do git push again. This time, your commits should succeed in reaching origin.

almostengineer@aeoffice:~/trafficpi$ git push origin cicdrelease
Enumerating objects: 103, done.
Counting objects: 100% (103/103), done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (60/60), done.
Writing objects: 100% (72/72), 10.04 KiB | 1.12 MiB/s, done.
Total 72 (delta 44), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (44/44), completed with 17 local objects.
remote:
remote: Create a pull request for 'cicdrelease' on GitHub by visiting:
remote:      https://github.com/almostengr/trafficpi/pull/new/cicdrelease
remote:
To github.com:almostengr/trafficpi.git
 * [new branch]      cicdrelease -> cicdrelease