Logs are not detailed enough

If you'd like to increase the level of detail in your logs, try these steps.

In this article

If your logs are not detailed enough, there are several steps you can take to make them more useful.

Enable step debug logging

You can enable step debug logging in GitHub Actions to increase the verbosity of a job's logs during and after a job's execution. For more information, see "Enabling debug logging."

Creating CodeQL debugging artifacts

You can obtain artifacts to help you debug CodeQL. The debug artifacts will be uploaded to the workflow run as an artifact named debug-artifacts. The data contains the CodeQL logs, CodeQL database(s), extracted source code files, and any SARIF file(s) produced by the workflow. For more information about downloading CodeQL artifacts, see "Downloading workflow artifacts."

These artifacts will help you debug problems with CodeQL code scanning. If you contact GitHub support, they might ask for this data.

Creating CodeQL debugging artifacts by re-running jobs with debug logging enabled

You can create CodeQL debugging artifacts by enabling debug logging and re-running the jobs. For more information about re-running GitHub Actions workflows and jobs, see "Re-running workflows and jobs."

You need to ensure that you select Enable debug logging. This option enables runner diagnostic logging and step debug logging for the run. You'll then be able to download debug-artifacts to investigate further. You do not need to modify the workflow file when creating CodeQL debugging artifacts by re-running jobs.

Creating CodeQL debugging artifacts using a workflow flag

You can create CodeQL debugging artifacts by using a flag in your workflow. For this, you need to modify the init step of your CodeQL analysis workflow file and set debug: true.

- name: Initialize CodeQL
  uses: github/codeql-action/init@v3
  with:
    debug: true