5.3.1 Fill the Catalog with Providers

Task 5.3.1.1: Use Github-Catalog Providers

Backstage can automatically discover and import entities from various sources.

Let’s configure GitHub discovery to automatically find all repositories with catalog-info.yaml files.

Step 1: Install the plugin

# From your Backstage root directory
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @backstage/plugin-catalog-backend-module-github

Update your backend by adding the following lines inside packages/backend/src/index.ts:

// GitHub catalog plugin
backend.add(import('@backstage/plugin-catalog-backend-module-github'));

Step 2: Configure the catalog provider

Check that the GitHub integration is configured like this in your app-config.yaml:

integrations:
  github:
    - host: github.com
      token: ${GITHUB_TOKEN}

You should have created the GITHUB_TOKEN in the lab GitHub Integration .

Edit your app-config.yaml to enable the GitHub catalog provider:

catalog:
  providers:
    github:
      myOrg:
        organization: 'your-github-org'  # Replace with your GitHub organization or username
        catalogPath: '/catalog-info.yaml'
        filters:
          branch: 'main'
          repository: '.*'  # Regex to match all repositories
        schedule:
          frequency: { minutes: 30 }
          timeout: { minutes: 3 }

Step 3: Restart Backstage

Restart your Backstage instance to apply the changes:

yarn start

This configuration will automatically discover all repositories in your GitHub organization that contain a catalog-info.yaml file and refresh every 30 minutes!

Step 4: Find the provided entities

• Checkout the new created Location entity for GitHub
• Navigate to Inspect Entity and checkout the annotations for GitHub