Understand execution environment builder

How it works

Execution environment builder connects to your Git provider and private automation hub to accomplish three tasks:

• Content discovery — scans Git repositories and private automation hub for Ansible collections (galaxy.yml files). Populates the collection catalog that users browse when building an EE definition.
• Saving EE definition files to a repository — creates a set of definition files and saves them to a Git repository (new repo or pull request) on the user's behalf, using OAuth to authenticate with their Git provider.
• Automated image builds — triggers a CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions or GitLab CI) to produce a container image from the saved definition files.

Configuration file

Secrets

Sensitive values such as Git provider tokens, OAuth client secrets, and registry credentials are stored separately from the configuration file.

• OpenShift deployments: Store secrets with oc create secret generic. Reference the secret name in your Helm chart values.
• RHEL appliance deployments: Store secrets with podman secret create using the portal_ prefix naming convention (for example, portal_github_oauth_client_id). The portal automatically injects any portal_-prefixed Podman secret into the container as an environment variable. Restart the portal service after creating secrets.

For automated image builds, configure organization secrets (GitHub) or group CI/CD variables (GitLab) in your Git provider. For details, see Connect to GitHub or Connect to GitLab in Related links.