renovate

What is renovate?

Renovate is a powerful tool for automating dependency updates in your projects. It helps keep your dependencies up-to-date, ensuring that your project remains secure and compatible with the latest versions of libraries and tools.

What are renovate's main functionalities?

Automated Dependency Updates

Renovate can automatically update your dependencies by creating pull requests for new versions. The configuration above extends the base configuration, which includes sensible defaults for most projects.

{
  "extends": ["config:base"]
}

Customizable Configuration

You can customize Renovate's behavior using a configuration file. In this example, packages that match the pattern '^@my-org/' are grouped together in a single pull request.

{
  "extends": ["config:base"],
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "packagePatterns": ["^@my-org/"],
      "groupName": "my-org packages"
    }
  ]
}

Scheduling Updates

Renovate allows you to schedule when updates should be created. The configuration above schedules updates to be created before 5 AM on Mondays.

{
  "extends": ["config:base"],
  "schedule": ["before 5am on monday"]
}

Other packages similar to renovate

dependabot

Dependabot is a GitHub-native tool for automating dependency updates. It is similar to Renovate in that it creates pull requests for new versions of dependencies. However, Dependabot is more tightly integrated with GitHub and may be easier to set up for users already using GitHub.

greenkeeper

Greenkeeper is another tool for automating dependency updates. It was one of the first tools in this space and offers similar functionality to Renovate. However, Greenkeeper has been deprecated in favor of Snyk, which now includes similar features.

snyk

Snyk is a comprehensive security tool that includes features for automating dependency updates. While it offers similar functionality to Renovate, Snyk also provides additional security features such as vulnerability scanning and remediation.

README

renovate

Keep npm dependencies up-to-date

Why

• Creates or updates Pull Requests for each dependency that needs updating
• Discovers and processes all package.json files in repository (supports monorepo architecture)
• Supports multiple major versions per-dependency at once
• Configurable via file, environment, CLI, and package.json
• Self-hosted

Install

$ npm install -g renovate

Authentication

You need to select a GitHub user for renovate to assume the identity of. It's recommended that you use a dedicated "bot" account for this to avoid user confusion.

The script will need a GitHub Personal Access Token with "repo" permissions. You can find instructions for generating it here: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-an-access-token-for-command-line-use/

This token needs to be configured via file, environment variable, or CLI. See docs/configuration.md for details. The simplest way is to expose it as GITHUB_TOKEN.

Usage

$ node renovate --help

  Usage: renovate [options] [repositories...]

  Options:

    -h, --help                        output usage information
    --enabled [boolean]               Enable or disable renovate
    --token <string>                  GitHub Auth Token
    --package-files <list>            Package file paths
    --dep-types <list>                Dependency types
    --ignore-deps <list>              Dependencies to ignore
    --ignore-future [boolean]         Ignore versions tagged as "future"
    --ignore-unstable [boolean]       Ignore versions with unstable semver
    --respect-latest [boolean]        Ignore versions newer than npm "latest" version
    --recreate-closed [boolean]       Recreate PRs even if same ones were closed previously
    --recreate-unmergeable [boolean]  Close and recreate PR if it has a merge conflict
    --labels <list>                   Labels to add to Pull Request
    --assignees <list>                Assignees for Pull Request
    --log-level <string>              Logging level

  Examples:

    $ renovate --token abc123 singapore/lint-condo
    $ renovate --ignore-unstable=false --log-level verbose singapore/lint-condo
    $ renovate singapore/lint-condo singapore/package-test

Deployment

See deployment docs for details.

Design Decisions

See design decisions doc for details.