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renovate/docs/behaviour.md

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Script Behaviour

This file documents the design choices as well as configuration options.

Synchronous Operation

The script current processes repositories, package files, and dependencies within them all synchronously.

  • Greatly reduces chance of hitting GitHub API limits
  • Implicitly enables any feature that results in multiple commits in the same branch
  • Simplifies logging

Note: Initial queries to NPM are done in parallel.

Multiple Configuration Methods

The script supports multiple configuration methods concurrently, and processed in order of priority. This allows examples such as token configured via environment variable and labels configured via target package.json.

Cascading Configuration

Configuration options applied per-package file override those per-repository, which override those which are global (all repositories).

The following options apply per-package file:

  • Dependency Types
  • Ignored Dependencies
  • Labels
  • Recreate PRs

The following options apply per-repository:

  • Token

The following options apply globally:

  • Log Level

Separate Branches per dependency

renovate will maintain separate branches per-dependency. So if 20 dependencies need updating, there will be at least 20 branches/PRs. Although this may seem undesirable, it was considered even less desirable if all 20 were in the same Pull Request and it's up to the users to determine which dependency upgrade(s) caused the build to fail.

However, it's still possible to override the default branch and PR name templates in such a way to produce a single branch for all dependencies. This needs to be done via configuration file. Here's an example configuration:

templates: {
  branchName: () => 'renovate-all',
  prBody: () => 'This Pull Request is for package.json updates generated by the renovate utility.',
  prTitleMajor: () => 'Renovate dependencies',
  prTitleMinor: () => 'Renovate dependencies',
  prTitlePin: () => 'Renovate dependencies',
},

Perhaps it could be useful to make this a directly configurable option in future.

One PR per Major release

renovate will create multiple branches/PRs if multiple major branch upgrades are available. For example if the current example is 1.6.0 and upgrades to 1.7.0 and 2.0.0 exist, then renovate will raise PRs for both the 1.x upgrade(s) and 2.x upgrade(s).

  • It's often the case that projects can't upgrade major dependency versions immediately.
  • It's also often the case that previous major versions continue receiving Minor or Patch updates.
  • Projects should get Minor and Patch updates for their current Major release even if a new Major release exists

Branch naming

Branches are named like renovate/webpack-1.x instead of renovate/webpack-1.2.0.

  • Branches often receive updates (e.g. new patches) before they're merged.
  • Naming the branch like 1.x means its name still names sense if a 1.2.1 release happens

Note: Branch names are configurable using the templates field.

Pull Request Recreation

By default, the script does not create a new PR if it finds an identical one already closed. This allows users to close unwelcome upgrade PRs and worry about them being recreated every run. Typically this is most useful for major upgrades. This option is configurable.

Range handling

renovate always pins dependencies, instead of updating ranges. Even if the project is using tilde ranges, why not pin them for consistency if you're also using renovate every day?

Perhaps this will be made configurable in future once requirements are understood.

Rebasing/updating Out-of-date Pull Requests

It's often the case that dependency updates can't be merged immediately, and lag behind the base branch. It's also possible that even when updates are merged quickly, they cause merge conflicts with each other and require manual conflict resolution.

Right now, renovate doesn't do anything about these, although it keeps adding commits if new releases of the dependency are available. It's also important to note that rebasing and/or resolving conflicts in existing branches is not technically possible via the GitHub API.

Possible future behaviour:

  • It seems undesirable for most to keep rebasing renovate pull requests every time the base changes. This would cause a lot of CI builds in most cases
  • It seems desirable to "fix" an existing renovate PR if it is no longer mergeable