renovatebot_renovate/docs/usage/configuration-options.md

title	description
Configuration Options	Configuration Options usable in renovate.json or package.json

Configuration Options

This document describes all the configuration options you may use in a Renovate configuration file. Any config you define applies to the whole repository (e.g. if you have a monorepo).

You can store your Renovate configuration file in one of these locations:

1. renovate.json
2. renovate.json5
3. .github/renovate.json
4. .github/renovate.json5
5. .gitlab/renovate.json
6. .gitlab/renovate.json5
7. .renovaterc
8. .renovaterc.json
9. .renovaterc.json5
10. package.json (within a "renovate" section)

!!! warning Storing the Renovate configuration in a package.json file is deprecated and support may be removed in the future.

When Renovate runs on a repository, it tries to find the configuration files in the order listed above. Renovate stops the search after it finds the first match.

Renovate always uses the config from the repository's default branch, even if that configuration specifies multiple baseBranches. Renovate does not read/override the config from within each base branch if present.

Also, be sure to check out Renovate's shareable config presets to save yourself from reinventing any wheels. Shareable config presets only work with the JSON format.

If you have any questions about the config options, or want to get help/feedback about a config, go to the discussions tab in the Renovate repository and start a new "config help" discussion. We will do our best to answer your question(s).

A subtype in the configuration table specifies what type you're allowed to use within the main element.

If a config option has a parent defined, it means it's only allowed to configure it within an object with the parent name, such as packageRules or hostRules.

When an array or object configuration option is mergeable, it means that values inside it will be added to any existing object or array that existed with the same name.

!!! note Config options with type=string are always non-mergeable, so mergeable=false.

---

addLabels

The labels field is non-mergeable, meaning that any config setting a list of PR labels will replace any existing list. If you want to append labels for matched rules, then define an addLabels array with one (or more) label strings. All matched addLabels strings will be attached to the PR.

Consider this example:

{
  "labels": ["dependencies"],
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["/eslint/"],
      "labels": ["linting"]
    },
    {
      "matchDepTypes": ["optionalDependencies"],
      "addLabels": ["optional"]
    }
  ]
}

With the above config:

• Optional dependencies will have the labels dependencies and optional
• ESLint dependencies will have the label linting
• All other dependencies will have the label dependencies

!!! note Keep your labels within the maximum character limit for your Git hosting platform. Renovate usually truncates labels to 50 characters, except for GitLab, which has a 255 character limit.

additionalBranchPrefix

By default, the value for this config option is an empty string. Normally you don't need to set this config option.

Here's an example where additionalBranchPrefix can help you. Say you're using a monorepo and want to split pull requests based on the location of the package definition, so that individual teams can manage their own Renovate pull requests. This can be done with this configuration:

{
  "additionalBranchPrefix": "{{parentDir}}-"
}

additionalReviewers

This option adds to the existing reviewer list, rather than replacing it like reviewers.

Use additionalReviewers when you want to add to a preset or base list, without replacing the original. For example, when adding focused reviewers for a specific package group.

assignAutomerge

By default, Renovate will not assign reviewers and assignees to an automerge-enabled PR unless it fails status checks. By configuring this setting to true, Renovate will instead always assign reviewers and assignees for automerging PRs at time of creation.

assignees

Must be valid usernames on the platform in use.

assigneesFromCodeOwners

If enabled Renovate tries to determine PR assignees by matching rules defined in a CODEOWNERS file against the changes in the PR.

Read the docs for your platform for details on syntax and allowed file locations:

• GitHub Docs, About code owners
• GitLab, Code Owners
• Bitbucket, Set up and use code owners

assigneesSampleSize

If configured, Renovate will take a random sample of given size from assignees and assign them only, instead of assigning the entire list of assignees you have configured.

autoApprove

Setting this to true will automatically approve the PRs.

You can also configure this using packageRules if you want to use it selectively (e.g. per-package).

autoReplaceGlobalMatch

Setting this to false will replace only the first match during replacements updates.

Disabling this is useful for situations where values are repeated within the dependency string, such as when the currentVersion is also featured somewhere within the currentDigest, but you only want to replace the first instance.

Consider this example:

FROM java:8@sha256:0e8b2a860

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["java"],
      "replacementName": "eclipse-temurin",
      "replacementVersion": "11"
    }
  ]
}

With the above replacement scenario, the current dependency has a version of 8, which also features several times within the digest section.

When using the default autoReplaceGlobalMatch configuration, Renovate will try to replace all instances of 8 within the dependency string with the replacementVersion value of 11. This will replace more than is intended and will be caught during replacement validation steps, resulting in the replacement PR to not be created.

When setting autoReplaceGlobalMatch configuration to false, Renovate will only replace the first occurrence of 8 and will successfully create a replacement PR.

automerge

By default, Renovate raises PRs but leaves them to someone or something else to merge them. By configuring this setting, you allow Renovate to automerge PRs or even branches. Using automerge reduces the amount of human intervention required.

Usually you won't want to automerge all PRs, for example most people would want to leave major dependency updates to a human to review first. You could configure Renovate to automerge all but major this way:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchUpdateTypes": ["minor", "patch", "pin", "digest"],
      "automerge": true
    }
  ]
}

Also note that this option can be combined with other nested settings, such as dependency type. So for example you could choose to automerge all (passing) devDependencies only this way:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDepTypes": ["devDependencies"],
      "automerge": true
    }
  ]
}

!!! note Branches creation follows schedule and the automerge follows automergeSchedule.

!!! warning "Negative reviews on GitHub block Renovate automerge" Renovate won't automerge on GitHub if a PR has a negative review.

!!! note On Azure there can be a delay between a PR being set as completed by Renovate, and Azure merging the PR / finishing its tasks. Renovate tries to delay until Azure is in the expected state, but it will continue if it takes too long. In some cases this can result in a dependency not being merged, and a fresh PR being created for the dependency.

Automerge and GitHub branch protection rules

You must select at least one status check in the Require status checks to pass before merging section of your branch protection rules on GitHub, if you match all three conditions:

• automerge=true
• platformAutomerge=true, Renovate defaults to true
• You use GitHub's Require status checks to pass before merging branch protection rule

If you don't select any status check, and you use platform automerge, then GitHub might automerge PRs with failing tests!

automergeComment

Use this only if you configure automergeType="pr-comment".

Example use:

{
  "automerge": true,
  "automergeType": "pr-comment",
  "automergeComment": "bors: r+"
}

automergeSchedule

Use the automergeSchedule option to define times of week or month during which Renovate may automerge its PRs. The default value for automergeSchedule is "at any time", which functions the same as setting a null schedule. To configure this option refer to schedule as the syntax is the same.

!!! warning When platformAutomerge is enabled, Renovate enqueues the platform PR automerge at time of creation, so the schedule specified in automergeSchedule cannot be followed. If it's essential that automerging only happens within the specific automergeSchedule time window, then you need to set platformAutomerge to false and instead rely on Renovate's automerge instead of the platform one.

automergeStrategy

The automerge strategy defaults to auto, so Renovate decides how to merge pull requests as best it can. If possible, Renovate follows the merge strategy set on the platform itself for the repository.

If you've set automerge=true and automergeType=pr for any of your dependencies, then you may choose what automerge strategy Renovate uses by setting the automergeStrategy config option. If you're happy with the default behavior, you don't need to do anything.

You may choose from these values:

• auto, Renovate decides how to merge
• fast-forward, "fast-forwarding" the main branch reference, no new commits in the resultant tree
• merge-commit, create a new merge commit
• rebase, rewrite history as part of the merge, but usually keep the individual commits
• squash, flatten the commits that are being merged into a single new commit

Platforms may only support some of these merge strategies.

If the chosen automerge strategy is not supported on your platform then Renovate stops automerging. In that case you'll have to set a supported automerge strategy.

automergeType

This setting is only applicable if you opt in to configure automerge to true for any of your dependencies.

Automerging defaults to using Pull Requests (automergeType="pr"). In that case Renovate first creates a branch and associated Pull Request, and then automerges the PR on a subsequent run once it detects the PR's status checks are "green". If by the next run the PR is already behind the base branch it will be automatically rebased, because Renovate only automerges branches which are up-to-date and green. If Renovate is scheduled for hourly runs on the repository but commits are made every 15 minutes to the main branch, then an automerge like this will keep getting deferred with every rebase.

!!! tip If you have no tests but still want Renovate to automerge, you need to add "ignoreTests": true to your configuration.

If you prefer that Renovate more silently automerge without Pull Requests at all, you can configure "automergeType": "branch". In this case Renovate will:

• Create the branch, wait for test results
• Rebase it any time it gets out of date with the base branch
• Automerge the branch commit if it's: (a) up-to-date with the base branch, and (b) passing all tests
• As a backup, raise a PR only if either: (a) tests fail, or (b) tests remain pending for too long (default: 24 hours)

The final value for automergeType is "pr-comment", intended only for users who already have a "merge bot" such as bors-ng and want Renovate to not actually automerge by itself and instead tell bors-ng to merge for it, by using a comment in the PR. If you're not already using bors-ng or similar, don't worry about this option.

azureWorkItemId

When creating a PR in Azure DevOps, some branches can be protected with branch policies to check for linked work items. Creating a work item in Azure DevOps is beyond the scope of Renovate, but Renovate can link an already existing work item when creating PRs.

baseBranches

By default, Renovate will detect and process only the repository's default branch. For most projects, this is the expected approach. Renovate also allows users to explicitly configure baseBranches, e.g. for use cases such as:

• You wish Renovate to process only a non-default branch, e.g. dev: "baseBranches": ["dev"]
• You have multiple release streams you need Renovate to keep up to date, e.g. in branches main and next: "baseBranches": ["main", "next"]
• You want to update your main branch and consistently named release branches, e.g. main and release/<version>: "baseBranches": ["main", "/^release\\/.*/"]

It's possible to add this setting into the renovate.json file as part of the "Configure Renovate" onboarding PR. If so then Renovate will reflect this setting in its description and use package file contents from the custom base branch(es) instead of default.

baseBranches supports Regular Expressions that must begin and end with /, e.g.:

{
  "baseBranches": ["main", "/^release\\/.*/"]
}

You can negate the regex by prefixing it with !. Only use a single negation and do not mix it with other branch names, since all branches are combined with or. With a negation, all branches except those matching the regex will be added to the result:

{
  "baseBranches": ["!/^pre-release\\/.*/"]
}

You can also use the special "$default" string to denote the repository's default branch, which is useful if you have it in an org preset, e.g.:

{
  "baseBranches": ["$default", "/^release\\/.*/"]
}

!!! note Do not use the baseBranches config option when you've set a forkToken. You may need a forkToken when you're using the Forking Renovate app.

bbAutoResolvePrTasks

Configuring this to true means that Renovate will mark all PR Tasks as complete.

bbUseDefaultReviewers

Configuring this to true means that Renovate will detect and apply the default reviewers rules to PRs (Bitbucket only).

branchConcurrentLimit

By default, Renovate won't enforce any concurrent branch limits. The config:recommended preset that many extend from limits the number of concurrent branches to 10, but in many cases a limit as low as 3 or 5 can be most efficient for a repository.

If you want the same limit for both concurrent branches and concurrent PRs, then set a value for prConcurrentLimit and it will be re-used for branch calculations too. But if you want to allow more concurrent branches than concurrent PRs, you can configure both values (e.g. branchConcurrentLimit=5 and prConcurrentLimit=3).

This limit is enforced on a per-repository basis.

Example config:

{
  "branchConcurrentLimit": 3
}

!!! warning Leaving PRs/branches as unlimited or as a high number increases the time it takes for Renovate to process a repository. If you find that Renovate is too slow when rebasing out-of-date branches, decrease the branchConcurrentLimit.

If you have too many concurrent branches which rebase themselves each run, Renovate can take a lot of time to rebase. Solutions:

• Decrease the concurrent branch limit (note: this won't go and delete any existing, so won't have an effect until you either merge or close existing ones manually)
• Remove automerge and/or automatic rebasing (set rebaseWhen to conflicted). However if you have branch protection saying PRs must be up to date then it's not ideal to remove automatic rebasing

branchName

If you truly need to configure this then it probably means either:

• You are hopefully mistaken, and there's a better approach you should use, so open a new "config help" discussion at the Renovate discussions tab or
• You have a use case we didn't expect, please open a discussion to see if we want to get a feature request from you

branchNameStrict

If true, Renovate removes special characters when slugifying the branch name:

• all special characters are removed
• only alphabetic characters are allowed
• hyphens - are used to separate sections

The default false behavior will mean that special characters like . and / may end up in the branch name.

!!! note Renovate will not apply any search/replace to the branchPrefix part of the branch name. If you don't want any / in your branch name then you will also need to change branchPrefix from the default renovate/ value to something like renovate-.

branchPrefix

You can modify this field if you want to change the prefix used. For example if you want branches to be like deps/eslint-4.x instead of renovate/eslint-4.x then you configure branchPrefix = deps/. Or if you wish to avoid forward slashes in branch names then you could use renovate_ instead, for example.

branchPrefix must be configured at the root of the configuration (e.g. not within any package rule) and is not allowed to use template values. e.g. instead of renovate/{{parentDir}}-, configure the template part in additionalBranchPrefix, like "additionalBranchPrefix": "{{parentDir}}-".

!!! note This setting does not change the default onboarding branch name, i.e. renovate/configure. If you wish to change that too, you need to also configure the field onboardingBranch in your global bot config.

branchPrefixOld

Renovate uses branch names as part of its checks to see if an update PR was created previously, and already merged or ignored. If you change branchPrefix, then no previously closed PRs will match, which could lead to Renovate recreating PRs in such cases. Instead, set the old branchPrefix value as branchPrefixOld to allow Renovate to look for those branches too, and avoid this happening.

branchTopic

This field is combined with branchPrefix and additionalBranchPrefix to form the full branchName. branchName uniqueness is important for dependency update grouping or non-grouping so be cautious about ever editing this field manually. This is an advanced field, and it's recommend you seek a config review before applying it.

bumpVersion

Currently, this config option only works with these managers:

• cargo
• helmv3
• npm
• nuget
• maven
• ocb
• pep621
• poetry
• sbt

Raise a feature request if you want to use this config option with other package managers.

Use bumpVersion if you want Renovate to update the version field in your package file when it updates the dependencies in that file. This can be handy when you have automated your package's release, as you you don't need extra steps after the Renovate upgrade, you can just release a new version.

Configure this value to "prerelease", "patch", "minor" or "major" to have Renovate update the version in your edited package file. e.g. if you wish Renovate to always increase the target package.json version with a patch update, configure this to "patch".

For npm only you can also configure this field to "mirror:x" where x is the name of a package in the package.json. Doing so means that the package.json version field will mirror whatever the version is that x depended on. Make sure that version is a pinned version of course, as otherwise it won't be valid.

For sbt note that Renovate will update the version string only for packages that have the version string in their project's built.sbt file.

cloneSubmodules

Enabling this option will mean that any detected Git submodules will be cloned at time of repository clone. Submodules are always cloned recursively.

Important: private submodules aren't supported by Renovate, unless the underlying ssh layer already has the correct permissions.

commitBody

Configure this if you wish Renovate to add a commit body, otherwise Renovate uses a regular single-line commit.

For example, To add [skip ci] to every commit you could configure:

{
  "commitBody": "[skip ci]"
}

Another example would be if you want to configure a DCO sign off to each commit.

If you want Renovate to sign off its commits, add the :gitSignOff preset to your extends array:

{
  "extends": [":gitSignOff"]
}

commitBodyTable

commitMessage

commitMessageAction

This is used to alter commitMessage and prTitle without needing to copy/paste the whole string. Actions may be like Update, Pin, Roll back, Refresh, etc. Check out the default value for commitMessage to understand how this field is used.

commitMessageExtra

This is used to alter commitMessage and prTitle without needing to copy/paste the whole string. The "extra" is usually an identifier of the new version, e.g. "to v1.3.2" or "to tag 9.2".

commitMessageLowerCase

With semanticCommits pr- and commit-titles will by default ("auto") be converted to all-lowercase. Set this to "never" to leave the titles untouched, allowing uppercase characters in semantic commit titles.

commitMessagePrefix

This is used to alter commitMessage and prTitle without needing to copy/paste the whole string. The "prefix" is usually an automatically applied semantic commit prefix, but it can also be statically configured.

commitMessageSuffix

This is used to add a suffix to commit messages. Usually left empty except for internal use (multiple base branches, and vulnerability alerts).

commitMessageTopic

You can use commitMessageTopic to change the commitMessage and prTitle without copy/pasting the whole string. The "topic" usually refers to the dependency being updated, for example: "dependency react".

We recommend you use matchManagers and commitMessageTopic in a packageRules array to set the commit message topic, like this:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchManagers": ["github-actions"],
      "commitMessageTopic": "{{depName}}"
    }
  ]
}

composerIgnorePlatformReqs

By default, Renovate will ignore Composer platform requirements as the PHP platform used by Renovate most probably won't match the required PHP environment of your project as configured in your composer.json file.

Composer 2.2 and up will be run with --ignore-platform-req='ext-*' --ignore-platform-req='lib-*', which ignores extension and library platform requirements but not the PHP version itself and should work in most cases.

Older Composer versions will be run with --ignore-platform-reqs, which means that all platform constraints (including the PHP version) will be ignored by default. This can result in updated dependencies that are not compatible with your platform.

To customize this behavior, you can explicitly ignore platform requirements (for example ext-zip) by setting them separately in this array. Each item will be added to the Composer command with --ignore-platform-req, resulting in it being ignored during its invocation. Note that this requires your project to use Composer V2, as V1 doesn't support excluding single platform requirements. The used PHP version will be guessed automatically from your composer.json definition, so php should not be added as explicit dependency.

If an empty array is configured, Renovate uses its default behavior.

Set to null (not recommended) to fully omit --ignore-platform-reqs/--ignore-platform-req during Composer invocation. This requires the Renovate image to be fully compatible with your Composer platform requirements in order for the Composer invocation to succeed, otherwise Renovate will fail to create the updated lock file. The Composer output should inform you about the reasons the update failed.

confidential

If enabled, all issues created by Renovate are set as confidential, even in a public repository.

!!! note The Dependency Dashboard issue will also be confidential. By default issues created by Renovate are visible to all users.

!!! note This option is applicable to GitLab only.

configMigration

If enabled, Renovate raises a pull request when it needs to migrate the Renovate config file. Renovate only performs configMigration on .json and .json5 files.

We're adding new features to Renovate bot often. Often you can keep using your Renovate config and use the new features right away. But sometimes you need to update your Renovate configuration. To help you with this, Renovate will create config migration pull requests, when you enable configMigration.

Example:

After we changed the baseBranches feature, the Renovate configuration migration pull request would make this change:

{
- "baseBranch": "main"
+ "baseBranches": ["main"]
}

!!! warning The configMigration feature writes plain JSON for .json files, and JSON5 for .json5 files. Renovate may downgrade JSON5 content to plain JSON. When downgrading JSON5 to JSON Renovate may also remove the JSON5 comments. This can happen because Renovate wrongly converts JSON5 to JSON, thus removing the comments.

For more details, read the config migration documentation.

configWarningReuseIssue

Renovate's default behavior is to reuse/reopen a single Config Warning issue in each repository so as to keep the "noise" down. However for some people this has the downside that the config warning won't be sorted near the top if you view issues by creation date. Configure this option to false if you prefer Renovate to open a new issue whenever there is a config warning.

constraints

Constraints are used in package managers which use third-party tools to update "artifacts" like lock files or checksum files. Typically, the constraint is detected automatically by Renovate from files within the repository and there is no need to manually configure it.

Constraints are also used to manually restrict which datasource versions are possible to upgrade to based on their language support. For now this datasource constraint feature only supports python, other compatibility restrictions will be added in the future.

{
  "constraints": {
    "python": "2.7"
  }
}

If you need to override constraints that Renovate detects from the repository, wrap it in the force object like so:

{
  "force": {
    "constraints": {
      "node": "< 15.0.0"
    }
  }
}

!!! note Make sure not to mix this up with the term compatibility, which Renovate uses in the context of version releases, e.g. if a Docker image is node:12.16.0-alpine then the -alpine suffix represents compatibility.

constraintsFiltering

This option controls whether Renovate filters new releases based on configured or detected constraints. Renovate supports two options:

• none: No release filtering (all releases allowed)
• strict: If the release's constraints match the package file constraints, then it's included

More advanced filtering options may come in future.

There must be a constraints object in your Renovate config, or constraints detected from package files, for this to work. Additionally, the "datasource" within Renovate must be capable of returning constraints values about each package's release.

This feature is limited to the following datasources:

• crate
• jenkins-plugins
• npm
• packagist
• pypi
• rubygems

Sometimes when using private registries they may omit constraints information, which then is another reason such filtering may not work even if the datasource and corresponding default public registry supports it.

!!! warning Enabling this feature may result in many package updates being filtered out silently. See below for a description of how it works.

When constraintsFiltering=strict, the following logic applies:

• Are there constraints for this repository, either detected from source or from config?
• Does this package's release declare constraints of its own (e.g. engines in Node.js)?
• If so, filter out this release unless the repository constraint is a subset of the release constraint

Here are some examples:

Your repo engines.node	Dependency release engines.node	Result
18	16 || 18	allowed
^18.10.0	>=18	allowed
^16.10.0 || >=18.0.0	>= 16.0.0	allowed
>=16	16 || 18	filtered
16	^16.10.0	filtered

When using with npm, we recommend you:

• Use constraintsFiltering on dependencies, not devDependencies (usually you do not need to be strict about development dependencies)
• Do not enable rollbackPrs at the same time (otherwise your current version may be rolled back if it's incompatible)

customDatasources

Use customDatasources to fetch releases from APIs or statically hosted sites and Renovate has no own datasource. These datasources can be referred by customManagers or can be used to overwrite default datasources.

For more details see the custom datasource documentation.

customManagers

Use customManagers(previously regexManagers) entries to configure the custom managers in Renovate.

You can define custom managers to handle:

• Proprietary file formats or conventions
• Popular file formats not yet supported as a manager by Renovate

Currently we only have one custom manager. The regex manager which is based on using Regular Expression named capture groups.

You must have a named capture group matching (e.g. (?<depName>.*)) or configure its corresponding template (e.g. depNameTemplate) for these fields:

• datasource
• depName and / or packageName
• currentValue

Use named capture group matching or set a corresponding template. We recommend you use only one of these methods, or you'll get confused.

We recommend that you also tell Renovate what versioning to use. If the versioning field is missing, then Renovate defaults to using semver versioning.

For more details and examples about it, see our documentation for the regex manager. For template fields, use the triple brace {{{ }}} notation to avoid Handlebars escaping any special characters.

!!! tip Look at our Custom Manager Presets, they may have what you need.

autoReplaceStringTemplate

Allows overwriting how the matched string is replaced. This allows for some migration strategies. E.g. moving from one Docker image repository to another one.

# The image of the service <registry>/<repo>/<image>:<tag>
image: my.old.registry/aRepository/andImage:1.18-alpine

{
  "customManagers": [
    {
      "customType": "regex",
      "fileMatch": ["values.yaml$"],
      "matchStrings": [
        "image:\\s+(?<depName>my\\.old\\.registry/aRepository/andImage):(?<currentValue>[^\\s]+)"
      ],
      "depNameTemplate": "my.new.registry/aRepository/andImage",
      "autoReplaceStringTemplate": "image: {{{depName}}}:{{{newValue}}}",
      "datasourceTemplate": "docker"
    }
  ]
}

This will lead to following update where 1.21-alpine is the newest version of my.new.registry/aRepository/andImage:

# The image of the service <registry>/<repo>/<image>:<tag>
image: my.new.registry/aRepository/andImage:1.21-alpine

currentValueTemplate

If the currentValue for a dependency is not captured with a named group then it can be defined in config using this field. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result.

customType

Example:

{
  "customManagers": [
    {
      "customType": "regex",
      "matchStrings": [
        "ENV .*?_VERSION=(?<currentValue>.*) # (?<datasource>.*?)/(?<depName>.*?)\\s"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

datasourceTemplate

If the datasource for a dependency is not captured with a named group then it can be defined in config using this field. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result.

depNameTemplate

If depName cannot be captured with a named capture group in matchString then it can be defined manually using this field. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result.

depTypeTemplate

If depType cannot be captured with a named capture group in matchString then it can be defined manually using this field. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result.

extractVersionTemplate

If extractVersion cannot be captured with a named capture group in matchString then it can be defined manually using this field. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result.

matchStrings

Each matchStrings must be a valid regular expression, optionally with named capture groups.

Example:

{
  "matchStrings": [
    "ENV .*?_VERSION=(?<currentValue>.*) # (?<datasource>.*?)/(?<depName>.*?)\\s"
  ]
}

matchStringsStrategy

matchStringsStrategy controls behavior when multiple matchStrings values are provided. Three options are available:

• any (default)
• recursive
• combination

any

Each provided matchString will be matched individually to the content of the packageFile. If a matchString has multiple matches in a file each will be interpreted as an independent dependency.

As example the following configuration will update all three lines in the Dockerfile.

{
  "customManagers": [
    {
      "customType": "regex",
      "fileMatch": ["^Dockerfile$"],
      "matchStringsStrategy": "any",
      "matchStrings": [
        "ENV [A-Z]+_VERSION=(?<currentValue>.*) # (?<datasource>.*?)/(?<depName>.*?)(\\&versioning=(?<versioning>.*?))?\\s",
        "FROM (?<depName>\\S*):(?<currentValue>\\S*)"
      ],
      "datasourceTemplate": "docker"
    }
  ]
}

FROM amd64/ubuntu:24.04
ENV GRADLE_VERSION=6.2 # gradle-version/gradle&versioning=maven
ENV NODE_VERSION=10.19.0 # github-tags/nodejs/node&versioning=node

recursive

If using recursive the matchStrings will be looped through and the full match of the last will define the range of the next one. This can be used to narrow down the search area to prevent multiple matches. But the recursive strategy still allows the matching of multiple dependencies as described below. All matches of the first matchStrings pattern are detected, then each of these matches will be used as basis for the input for the next matchStrings pattern, and so on. If the next matchStrings pattern has multiple matches then it will split again. This process will be followed as long there is a match plus a next matchingStrings pattern is available.

Matched groups will be available in subsequent matching layers.

This is an example how this can work. The first custom manager will only upgrade grafana/loki as looks for the backup key then looks for the test key and then uses this result for extraction of necessary attributes. But the second custom manager will upgrade both definitions as its first matchStrings matches both test keys.

{
  "customManagers": [
    {
      "customType": "regex",
      "fileMatch": ["^example.json$"],
      "matchStringsStrategy": "recursive",
      "matchStrings": [
        "\"backup\":\\s*{[^}]*}",
        "\"test\":\\s*\\{[^}]*}",
        "\"name\":\\s*\"(?<depName>.*)\"[^\"]*\"type\":\\s*\"(?<datasource>.*)\"[^\"]*\"value\":\\s*\"(?<currentValue>.*)\""
      ],
      "datasourceTemplate": "docker"
    },
    {
      "fileMatch": ["^example.json$"],
      "matchStringsStrategy": "recursive",
      "matchStrings": [
        "\"test\":\\s*\\{[^}]*}",
        "\"name\":\\s*\"(?<depName>.*)\"[^\"]*\"type\":\\s*\"(?<datasource>.*)\"[^\"]*\"value\":\\s*\"(?<currentValue>.*)\""
      ],
      "datasourceTemplate": "docker"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "backup": {
    "test": {
      "name": "grafana/loki",
      "type": "docker",
      "value": "1.6.1"
    }
  },
  "setup": {
    "test": {
      "name": "python",
      "type": "docker",
      "value": "3.9.0"
    }
  }
}

combination

You may use this option to combine the values of multiple lines inside a file. You can combine multiple lines with matchStringStrategy values, but the combination approach is less susceptible to white space or line breaks stopping a match.

combination can only match one dependency per file. To update multiple dependencies with combination you must define multiple custom managers.

Matched group values will be merged to form a single dependency.

{
  "customManagers": [
    {
      "customType": "regex",
      "fileMatch": ["^main.yml$"],
      "matchStringsStrategy": "combination",
      "matchStrings": [
        "prometheus_image:\\s*\"(?<depName>.*)\"\\s*//",
        "prometheus_version:\\s*\"(?<currentValue>.*)\"\\s*//"
      ],
      "datasourceTemplate": "docker"
    },
    {
      "fileMatch": ["^main.yml$"],
      "matchStringsStrategy": "combination",
      "matchStrings": [
        "thanos_image:\\s*\"(?<depName>.*)\"\\s*//",
        "thanos_version:\\s*\"(?<currentValue>.*)\"\\s*//"
      ],
      "datasourceTemplate": "docker"
    }
  ]
}

prometheus_image: "prom/prometheus"  // a comment
prometheus_version: "v2.21.0" // a comment
------
thanos_image: "prom/prometheus"  // a comment
thanos_version: "0.15.0" // a comment

In the above example, each custom manager will match a single dependency each.

packageNameTemplate

packageName is used for looking up dependency versions. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result. It will default to the value of depName if left unconfigured/undefined.

registryUrlTemplate

If the registryUrls for a dependency is not captured with a named group then it can be defined in config using this field. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result.

versioningTemplate

If the versioning for a dependency is not captured with a named group then it can be defined in config using this field. It will be compiled using Handlebars and the regex groups result.

customizeDashboard

You may use the customizeDashboard object to customize the Dependency Dashboard.

Supported fields:

• repoProblemsHeader: This field will replace the header of the Repository Problems in the Dependency Dashboard issue.

defaultRegistryUrlTemplate

This field is used to build a registryUrl for the dependency. It is not needed if either:

• The dependency can be found with the default registryUrls of the datasource (e.g. npmjs registry if the datasource is npm), or
• The matching groups you specified as part of the matching already include a registryUrl group As this is a template it can be dynamically set. E.g. add the packageName as part of the URL:

{
  customDatasources: {
    foo: {
      defaultRegistryUrlTemplate: 'https://example.foo.bar/v1/{{ packageName }}',
    },
  },
}

format

Defines which format the API is returning. Currently json or plain are supported, see the custom datasource documentation for more information.

transformTemplates

transformTemplates is a list of jsonata rules which get applied serially. Use this if the API does not return a Renovate compatible schema.

defaultRegistryUrls

Override a datasource's default registries with this config option. The datasources's customRegistrySupport value must be true for the config option to work.

Default registries are only used when both:

• The manager did not extract any registryUrls values, and
• No registryUrls values have been applied via config, such as packageRules

Think of defaultRegistryUrls as a way to specify the "fallback" registries for a datasource, for use when no registryUrls are extracted or configured. Compare that to registryUrls, which are a way to override registries.

dependencyDashboard

Starting from version v26.0.0 the "Dependency Dashboard" is enabled by default as part of the commonly-used config:recommended preset.

To disable the Dependency Dashboard, add the preset :disableDependencyDashboard or set dependencyDashboard to false.

{
  "extends": ["config:recommended", ":disableDependencyDashboard"]
}

Configuring dependencyDashboard to true will lead to the creation of a "Dependency Dashboard" issue within the repository. This issue has a list of all PRs pending, open, closed (unmerged) or in error. The goal of this issue is to give visibility into all updates that Renovate is managing.

Examples of what having a Dependency Dashboard will allow you to do:

• View all PRs in one place, rather than having to filter PRs by author
• Rebase/retry multiple PRs without having to open each individually
• Override any rate limiting (e.g. concurrent PRs) or scheduling to force Renovate to create a PR that would otherwise be suppressed
• Recreate an unmerged PR (e.g. for a major update that you postponed by closing the original PR)

!!! tip Enabling the Dependency Dashboard by itself does not change the "control flow" of Renovate. Renovate still creates and manages PRs, and still follows your schedules and rate limits. The Dependency Dashboard gives you extra visibility and control over your updates.

dependencyDashboardApproval

This feature allows you to use Renovate's Dependency Dashboard to force approval of updates before they are created.

By setting dependencyDashboardApproval to true in config (including within packageRules), you can tell Renovate to wait for your approval from the Dependency Dashboard before creating a branch/PR. You can approve a pending PR by selecting the checkbox in the Dependency Dashboard issue.

!!! tip When you set dependencyDashboardApproval to true the Dependency Dashboard issue will be created automatically, you do not need to turn on dependencyDashboard explicitly.

You can configure Renovate to wait for approval for:

• all package upgrades
• major, minor, patch level upgrades
• specific package upgrades
• upgrades coming from specific package managers

If you want to approve all upgrades, set dependencyDashboardApproval to true:

{
  "dependencyDashboardApproval": true
}

If you want to require approval for major updates, set dependencyDashboardApproval to true within a major object:

{
  "major": {
    "dependencyDashboardApproval": true
  }
}

If you want to approve specific packages, set dependencyDashboardApproval to true within a packageRules entry where you have defined a specific package or pattern.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["/^@package-name/"],
      "dependencyDashboardApproval": true
    }
  ]
}

dependencyDashboardAutoclose

You can configure this to true if you prefer Renovate to close an existing Dependency Dashboard whenever there are no outstanding PRs left.

dependencyDashboardFooter

dependencyDashboardHeader

dependencyDashboardLabels

The labels only get updated when the Dependency Dashboard issue updates its content and/or title. It is pointless to edit the labels, as Renovate bot restores the labels on each run.

dependencyDashboardOSVVulnerabilitySummary

Use this option to control if the Dependency Dashboard lists the OSV-sourced CVEs for your repository. You can choose from:

• none (default) do not list any CVEs
• unresolved list CVEs that have no fixes
• all list all CVEs

You will only get OSV-based vulnerability alerts for direct dependencies.

This feature is independent of the osvVulnerabilityAlerts option.

The source of these CVEs is OSV.dev.

dependencyDashboardTitle

Configure this option if you prefer a different title for the Dependency Dashboard.

description

The description field can be used inside any configuration object to add a human-readable description of the object's config purpose. A description field embedded within a preset is also collated as part of the onboarding description unless the preset only consists of presets itself. Presets which consist only of other presets have their own description omitted from the onboarding description because they will be fully described by the preset descriptions within.

digest

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to PRs that update digests.

draftPR

If you want the PRs created by Renovate to be considered as drafts rather than normal PRs, you could add this property to your renovate.json:

{
  "draftPR": true
}

This option is evaluated at PR/MR creation time.

!!! note Forgejo, Gitea and GitLab implement draft status by checking if the PR's title starts with certain strings. This means that draftPR on Forgejo, Gitea and GitLab are incompatible with the legacy method of triggering Renovate to rebase a PR by renaming the PR to start with rebase!.

enabled

The most common use of enabled is if you want to turn Renovate's functionality off, for some reason.

For example, if you wanted to disable Renovate completely on a repository, you could make this your renovate.json:

{
  "enabled": false
}

To disable Renovate for all eslint packages, you can configure a package rule like:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["eslint**"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

To disable Renovate for npm devDependencies but keep it for dependencies you could configure:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchManagers": ["npm"],
      "matchDepTypes": ["devDependencies"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

enabledManagers

This is a way to allow only certain package managers and implicitly disable all others.

Example:

{
  "enabledManagers": ["dockerfile", "npm"]
}

To enable custom managers you will need to add custom. prefix before their names

Example:

{
  "enabledManagers": ["custom.regex"]
}

For the full list of available managers, see the Supported Managers documentation.

encrypted

Before you put any secrets in your repository configuration, encrypt the secrets. You can encrypt secrets using either a HTML page, or the CLI.

To encrypt secrets for the Mend Renovate App for github.com with a HTML page, go to app.renovatebot.com/encrypt and complete the form. If you're self-hosting Renovate, you may download and edit the form, to use your own PGP public key.

You can also encrypt secrets from the CLI, using the curl, echo, jq, gpg, grep and tr CLI programs. Here is an example:

curl https://app.renovatebot.com/renovate.pgp --output renovate.pgp
echo -n '{"o":"your-organization", "r":"your-repository (optional)", "v":"your-secret-value"}' | jq . -c | gpg --encrypt -a --recipient-file renovate.pgp | grep -v '^----' | tr -d '\n'

The above script uses:

• curl to download the Mend Renovate hosted app's public key
• echo to echo a JSON object into jq
• jq to validate the JSON and then compact it
• gpg to encrypt the contents
• grep and tr to extract the encrypted payload which we will use

The jq step is optional, you can leave it out if you wish. Its primary value is validating that the string you echo to gpg is valid JSON, and compact.

!!! note Encrypted secrets must have at least an org/group scope, and optionally a repository scope. This means that Renovate will check if a secret's scope matches the current repository before applying it, and warn/discard if there is a mismatch.

Encrypted secrets usually have a single organization. But you may encrypt a secret with more than one organization, for example: org1,org2. This way the secret can be used in both the org1 and org2 organizations.

For more information on how to use secrets for private packages, read Private package support.

env

This option allows users to specify explicit environment variables values. It is valid only as a top-level configuration option and not, for example, within packageRules.

!!! warning The bot administrator must configure a list of allowed environment names in the allowedEnv config option, before users can use those allowed names in the env option.

Behavior:

• This option only applies when Renovate runs package manager commands (e.g. npm install), within the updateArtifacts() function
• Values set in the env configuration override corresponding environment variables, including those from customEnvVariables and process.env

{
  "env": {
    "SOME_ENV_VARIABLE": "SOME_STRING_VALUE"
  }
}

excludeCommitPaths

Be careful you know what you're doing with this option. The initial intended use is to allow the user to exclude certain dependencies from being added/removed/modified when "vendoring" dependencies. Example:

{
  "excludeCommitPaths": ["vendor/golang.org/x/text/**"]
}

The above would mean Renovate would not include files matching the above glob pattern in the commit, even if it thinks they should be updated.

expandCodeOwnersGroups

If configured, Renovate will expand any matching CODEOWNERS groups into a full list of group members and assign them individually instead of the group. This is particularly useful when combined with assigneesSampleSize and assigneesFromCodeOwners, so that only a subset of the Codeowners are assigned instead of the whole group.

extends

See shareable config presets for details. Learn how to use presets by reading the Key concepts, Presets page.

extractVersion

Only use this config option when the raw version strings from the datasource do not match the expected format that you need in your package file. You must define a "named capture group" called version like in the examples below.

For example, to extract only the major.minor precision from a GitHub release, the following would work:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["foo"],
      "extractVersion": "^(?<version>v\\d+\\.\\d+)"
    }
  ]
}

The above will change a raw version of v1.31.5 to v1.31, for example.

Alternatively, to strip a release- prefix:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["bar"],
      "extractVersion": "^release-(?<version>.*)$"
    }
  ]
}

The above will change a raw version of release-2.0.0 to 2.0.0, for example. A similar one could strip leading v prefixes:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["baz"],
      "extractVersion": "^v(?<version>.*)$"
    }
  ]
}

fetchChangeLogs

Use this config option to configure changelogs/release notes fetching. The available options are:

• off - disable changelogs fetching
• branch - fetch changelogs while creating/updating branch
• pr(default) - fetches changelogs while creating/updating pull-request

Avoid setting fetchChangeLogs=branch, because this slows down Renovate. But if you're embedding changelogs in commit information, you may use fetchChangeLogs=branch.

Renovate can fetch changelogs when they are hosted on one of these platforms:

• Bitbucket Cloud
• GitHub (.com and Enterprise Server)
• GitLab (.com and CE/EE)

If you are running on any platform except github.com, you need to configure a Personal Access Token to allow Renovate to fetch changelogs notes from github.com.

!!! note Renovate can only show changelogs from some platforms and some package managers. We're planning improvements so that Renovate can show more changelogs. Read issue 14138 on GitHub to get an overview of the planned work.

fileMatch

fileMatch is used by Renovate to know which files in a repository to parse and extract. fileMatch patterns in the user config are added to the default values and do not replace them. The default fileMatch patterns cannot be removed, so if you need to include or exclude specific paths then use the ignorePaths or includePaths configuration options.

Some fileMatch patterns are short, like Renovate's default Go Modules fileMatch for example. Here Renovate looks for any go.mod file. In this case you can probably keep using that default fileMatch.

At other times, the possible files is too vague for Renovate to have any default. For default, Kubernetes manifests can exist in any *.yaml file and we don't want Renovate to parse every single YAML file in every repository just in case some of them have a Kubernetes manifest, so Renovate's default fileMatch for manager kubernetes is actually empty ([]) and needs the user to tell Renovate what directories/files to look in.

Finally, there are cases where Renovate's default fileMatch is good, but you may be using file patterns that a bot couldn't possibly guess about. For example, Renovate's default fileMatch for Dockerfile is ['(^|/|\\.)([Dd]ocker|[Cc]ontainer)file$', '(^|/)([Dd]ocker|[Cc]ontainer)file[^/]*$']. This will catch files like backend/Dockerfile, prefix.Dockerfile or Dockerfile-suffix, but it will miss files like ACTUALLY_A_DOCKERFILE.template. Because fileMatch is mergeable, you don't need to duplicate the defaults and could add the missing file like this:

{
  "dockerfile": {
    "fileMatch": ["^ACTUALLY_A_DOCKERFILE\\.template$"]
  }
}

If you configure fileMatch then it must be within a manager object (e.g. dockerfile in the above example). The full list of supported managers can be found here.

filterUnavailableUsers

When this option is enabled PRs are not assigned to users that are unavailable. This option only works on platforms that support the concept of user availability. For now, you can only use this option on the GitLab platform.

followTag

For followTag to work, the datasource must support distribution streams or tags, like for example npm does.

The main use case is to follow a pre-release tag of a dependency, say TypeScripts's "insiders" build:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["typescript"],
      "followTag": "insiders"
    }
  ]
}

If you've set a followTag then Renovate skips its normal major/minor/patch upgrade logic and stable/unstable consistency logic, and instead keeps your dependency version synced strictly to the version in the tag.

Renovate follows tags strictly, this can cause problems when a tagged stream is no longer maintained. For example: you're following the next tag, but later the stream you actually want is called stable instead. If next is no longer getting updates, you must switch your followTag to stable to get updates again.

forkModeDisallowMaintainerEdits

Use forkModeDisallowMaintainerEdits to disallow maintainers from editing Renovate's pull requests when in fork mode.

If GitHub pull requests are created from a fork repository, the PR author can decide to allow upstream repository to modify the PR directly.

Allowing maintainers to edit pull requests directly is helpful when Renovate pull requests require more changes. The reviewer can simply push to the pull request without having to create a new PR. More details here.

You may decide to disallow edits to Renovate pull requests in order to workaround issues in Renovate where modified fork branches are not deleted properly: See this issue. If this option is enabled, reviewers will need to create a new PR if more changes are needed.

!!! note This option is only relevant if you set forkToken.

forkProcessing

By default, Renovate skips any forked repositories when in autodiscover mode. It even skips a forked repository that has a Renovate configuration file, because Renovate doesn't know if that file was added by the forked repository.

Process a fork in autodiscover mode

If you want Renovate to run on a forked repository when in autodiscover mode then:

• Ensure a renovate.json config exists with "forkProcessing": "enabled" in your repository,
• Or run the CLI command with --fork-processing=enabled

Process a fork in other modes

If you're running Renovate in some other mode, for example when giving a list of repositories to Renovate, but want to skip forked repositories: set "forkProcessing": "disabled" in your global config.

When using the Mend Renovate App

The behavior of forkProcessing depends on how you allow Renovate to run on your account.

Renovate runs on all repositories

If you allow Renovate to run on all your repositories, forkProcessing will be "disabled". To run Renovate on a fork: add "forkProcessing": "enabled" to the forked repository's renovate.json file.

Renovate runs on selected repositories

If you allow Renovate to run on "Selected" repositories, forkProcessing will be "enabled" for each "Selected" repository.

Allowed filenames

Only the onboardingConfigFileName (which defaults to renovate.json) is supported for forkProcessing. You can't use other filenames because Renovate only checks the default filename when using the Git-hosting platform's API.

gitAuthor

You can customize the Git author that's used whenever Renovate creates a commit, although we do not recommend this. When this field is unset (default), Renovate will use its platform credentials (e.g. token) to learn/discover its account's git author automatically.

!!! note If running as a GitHub App and using platformCommit, GitHub itself sets the git author in commits so you should not configure this field.

The gitAuthor option accepts a RFC5322-compliant string. It's recommended to include a name followed by an email address, e.g.

Development Bot <dev-bot@my-software-company.com>

!!! danger We strongly recommend that the Git author email you use is unique to Renovate. Otherwise, if another bot or human shares the same email and pushes to one of Renovate's branches then Renovate will mistake the branch as unmodified and potentially force push over the changes.

gitIgnoredAuthors

Specify commit authors ignored by Renovate. This field accepts RFC5322-compliant strings.

By default, Renovate will treat any PR as modified if another Git author has added to the branch. When a PR is considered modified, Renovate won't perform any further commits such as if it's conflicted or needs a version update. If you have other bots which commit on top of Renovate PRs, and don't want Renovate to treat these PRs as modified, then add the other Git author(s) to gitIgnoredAuthors.

Example:

{
  "gitIgnoredAuthors": ["some-bot@example.org"]
}

gitLabIgnoreApprovals

Ignore the default project level approval(s), so that Renovate bot can automerge its merge requests, without needing approval(s). Under the hood, it creates a MR-level approval rule where approvals_required is set to 0. This option works only when automerge=true and either automergeType=pr or automergeType=branch. Also, approval rules overriding should not be prevented in GitLab settings.

goGetDirs

By default, Renovate will run go get -d -t ./... to update the go.sum. If you need to modify this path, for example in order to ignore directories, you can override the default ./... value using this option:

{
  "goGetDirs": ["./some-project/", "./tools/..."]
}

group

The default configuration for groups are essentially internal to Renovate and you normally shouldn't need to modify them. But you may add settings to any group by defining your own group configuration object.

groupName

There are multiple cases where it can be useful to group multiple upgrades together. Internally Renovate uses this for branches such as "Pin Dependencies", "Lock File Maintenance", etc. Another example used previously is to group together all related eslint packages, or perhaps angular or babel. To enable grouping, you configure the groupName field to something non-null.

The groupName field allows free text and does not have any semantic interpretation by Renovate. All updates sharing the same groupName will be placed into the same branch/PR. For example, to group all non-major devDependencies updates together into a single PR:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDepTypes": ["devDependencies"],
      "matchUpdateTypes": ["patch", "minor"],
      "groupName": "devDependencies (non-major)"
    }
  ]
}

groupSlug

By default, Renovate will "slugify" the groupName to determine the branch name. For example if you named your group "devDependencies (non-major)" then the branchName would be renovate/devdependencies-non-major. If you wished to override this then you could configure like this:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDepTypes": ["devDependencies"],
      "matchUpdateTypes": ["patch", "minor"],
      "groupName": "devDependencies (non-major)",
      "groupSlug": "dev-dependencies"
    }
  ]
}

As a result of the above, the branchName would be renovate/dev-dependencies instead.

!!! note You shouldn't usually need to configure this unless you really care about your branch names.

hashedBranchLength

Some code hosting systems have restrictions on the branch name lengths, this option lets you get around these restrictions. You can set the hashedBranchLength option to a number of characters that works for your system and then Renovate will generate branch names with the correct length by hashing additionalBranchPrefix and branchTopic, and then truncating the hash so that the full branch name (including branchPrefix) has the right number of characters.

Example: If you have set branchPrefix: "deps-" and hashedBranchLength: 12 it will result in a branch name like deps-5bf36ec instead of the traditional pretty branch name like deps-react-17.x.

hostRules

The primary purpose of hostRules is to configure credentials for host authentication. You tell Renovate how to match against the host you need authenticated, and then you also tell it which credentials to use.

The lookup keys for hostRules are: hostType and matchHost, both of which are optional.

Supported credential fields are token, username, password, timeout, enabled and insecureRegistry.

Example for configuring docker auth:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "docker.io",
      "username": "<some-username>",
      "password": "<some-password>"
    }
  ]
}

If multiple hostRules match a request, then they will be applied in the following order/priority:

1. rules with only hostType specified
2. rules with only matchHost specified (sorted by matchHost length if multiple match)
3. rules with both matchHost and hostType specified (sorted by matchHost length if multiple match)

To disable requests to a particular host, you can configure a rule like:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "registry.npmjs.org",
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

A preset alternative to the above is:

{
  "extends": [":disableHost(registry.npmjs.org)"]
}

To match specific ports you have to add a protocol to matchHost:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "https://domain.com:9118",
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

!!! warning Using matchHost without a protocol behaves the same as if you had set no matchHost configuration.

!!! note Disabling a host is only 100% effective if added to self-hosted config. Renovate currently still checks its cache for results first before trying to connect, so if a public host is blocked in your repository config (e.g. renovate.json) then it's possible you may get cached results from that host if another repository using the same bot has successfully queried for the same dependency recently.

abortIgnoreStatusCodes

This field can be used to configure status codes that Renovate ignores and passes through when abortOnError is set to true. For example to also skip 404 responses then configure the following:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "abortOnError": true,
      "abortIgnoreStatusCodes": [404]
    }
  ]
}

!!! tip This field is not mergeable, so the last-applied host rule takes precedence.

abortOnError

Use this field to configure Renovate to abort runs for custom hosts. By default, Renovate will only abort for known public hosts, which has the downside that transient errors for other hosts can cause autoclosing of PRs.

To abort Renovate runs for HTTP failures from any host:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "abortOnError": true
    }
  ]
}

To abort Renovate runs for any docker datasource failures:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "hostType": "docker",
      "abortOnError": true
    }
  ]
}

To abort Renovate for errors for a specific docker host:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "docker.company.com",
      "abortOnError": true
    }
  ]
}

When this field is enabled, Renovate will abort its run if it encounters either (a) any low-level http error (e.g. ETIMEDOUT) or (b) gets a response not matching any of the configured abortIgnoreStatusCodes (e.g. 500 Internal Error);

artifactAuth

You may use this field whenever it is needed to only enable authentication for a specific set of managers.

For example, using this option could be used whenever authentication using Git for private composer packages is already being handled through the use of SSH keys, which results in no need for also setting up authentication using tokens.

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "hostType": "gitlab",
      "matchHost": "gitlab.myorg.com",
      "token": "abc123",
      "artifactAuth": ["composer"]
    }
  ]
}

Supported artifactAuth and hostType combinations:

artifactAuth	hostTypes
composer	gitlab, packagist, github, git-tags

authType

You may use the authType option to create a custom HTTP authorization header. For authType to work, you must also set your own token.

Do not set authType=Bearer: it's the default setting for Renovate anyway. Do not set a username or password when you're using authType, as authType doesn't use usernames or passwords.

An example for npm basic auth with token:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "npm.custom.org",
      "token": "<some-token>",
      "authType": "Basic"
    }
  ]
}

This will generate the following header: authorization: Basic <some-token>.

To use a bare token in the authorization header (required by e.g. Hex) - use the authType "Token-Only":

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "https://hex.pm/api/repos/private_repo/",
      "token": "<some-token>",
      "authType": "Token-Only"
    }
  ]
}

This will generate the header authorization: <some-token>.

concurrentRequestLimit

Usually the default setting is fine, but you can use concurrentRequestLimit to limit the number of concurrent outstanding requests. You only need to adjust this setting if a datasource is rate limiting Renovate or has problems with the load. The limit will be set for any host it applies to.

Example config:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "api.github.com",
      "concurrentRequestLimit": 2
    }
  ]
}

Use an exact host for matchHost and not a domain (e.g. api.github.com as shown above and not github.com). Do not combine with hostType in the same rule or it won't work.

dnsCache

Enable got dnsCache support. It uses lru-cache with the max option set to 1000.

enableHttp2

Enable got http2 support.

headers

You can provide a headers object that includes fields to be forwarded to the HTTP request headers. By default, all headers starting with "X-" are allowed.

A bot administrator may configure an override for allowedHeaders to configure more permitted headers.

headers value(s) configured in the bot admin hostRules (for example in a config.js file) are not validated, so it may contain any header regardless of allowedHeaders.

For example:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "https://domain.com/all-versions",
      "headers": {
        "X-custom-header": "secret"
      }
    }
  ]
}

hostType

hostType is another way to filter rules and can be either a platform such as github and bitbucket-server, or it can be a datasource such as docker and rubygems. You usually don't need to configure it in a host rule if you have already configured matchHost and only one host type is in use for those, as is usually the case. hostType can help for cases like an enterprise registry that serves multiple package types and has different authentication for each, although it's often the case that multiple matchHost rules could achieve the same thing.

httpsCertificate

Specifies the Certificate chains in PEM format for mTLS authentication.

httpsCertificateAuthority

By default, Renovate uses the curated list of well-known CAs by Mozilla. You may use another Certificate Authority instead, by setting it in the httpsCertificateAuthority config option.

httpsPrivateKey

Specifies the private key in PEM format for mTLS authentication.

!!! warning Do not put your private key into this field, to avoid losing confidentiality completely. You must use secrets to pass it down securely instead.

insecureRegistry

Enable this option to allow Renovate to connect to an insecure Docker registry that is HTTP only. This is insecure and is not recommended.

Example:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "reg.insecure.com",
      "insecureRegistry": true
    }
  ]
}

keepAlive

If enabled, this allows a single TCP connection to remain open for multiple HTTP(S) requests/responses.

matchHost

This can be a base URL (e.g. https://api.github.com) or a hostname like github.com or api.github.com. If the value starts with http(s) then it will only match against URLs which start with the full base URL. Otherwise, it will be matched by checking if the URL's hostname matches the matchHost directly or ends with it. When checking the end of the hostname, a single dot is prefixed to the value of matchHost, if one is not already present, to ensure it can only match against whole domain segments.

The matchHost URL must be the same as the registryUrl set in .npmrc, or you'll get authentication issues when the artifacts are updated when yarn or npm runs.

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "https://gitlab.myorg.com/api/v4/packages/npm/",
      "token": "abc123"
    }
  ]
}

The above corresponds with an .npmrc like the following:

registry=https://gitlab.myorg.com/api/v4/packages/npm/

!!! note Values containing a URL path but missing a scheme will be prepended with 'https://' (e.g. domain.com/path -> https://domain.com/path)

maxRequestsPerSecond

In addition to concurrentRequestLimit, you can limit the maximum number of requests that can be made per one second. It can be used to set minimal delay between two requests to the same host. Fractional values are allowed, e.g. 0.25 means 1 request per 4 seconds. Default value 0 means no limit.

Example config:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "api.github.com",
      "maxRequestsPerSecond": 2
    }
  ]
}

maxRetryAfter

A remote host may return a 4xx response with a Retry-After header value, which indicates that Renovate has been rate-limited. Renovate may try to contact the host again after waiting a certain time, that's set by the host. By default, Renovate tries again after the Retry-After header value has passed, up to a maximum of 60 seconds. If the Retry-After value is more than 60 seconds, Renovate will abort the request instead of waiting.

You can configure a different maximum value in seconds using maxRetryAfter:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "api.github.com",
      "maxRetryAfter": 25
    }
  ]
}

newLogLevel

For log level remapping, newLogLevel will set for the particular log message:

{
  "logLevelRemap": [
    {
      "matchMessage": "/Error executing maven wrapper update command/",
      "newLogLevel": "warn"
    }
  ]
}

readOnly

If the readOnly field is being set to true inside the host rule, it will match only against the requests that are known to be read operations. Examples are GET requests or HEAD requests, but also it could be certain types of GraphQL queries.

This option could be used to avoid rate limits for certain platforms like GitHub or Bitbucket, by offloading the read operations to a different user.

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "api.github.com",
      "readOnly": true,
      "token": "********"
    }
  ]
}

If more than one token matches for a read-only request then the readOnly token will be given preference.

timeout

Use this figure to adjust the timeout for queries. The default is 60s, which is quite high. To adjust it down to 10s for all queries, do this:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "timeout": 10000
    }
  ]
}

ignoreDeprecated

By default, Renovate won't update a dependency version to a deprecated release unless the current version was itself deprecated. The goal of this is to make sure you don't upgrade from a non-deprecated version to a deprecated one, only because it's higher than the current version.

If for some reason you wish to force deprecated updates with Renovate, you can configure ignoreDeprecated to false, which we do not recommend for most situations.

ignoreDeps

The ignoreDeps configuration field allows you to define a list of dependency names to be ignored by Renovate. Currently it supports only "exact match" dependency names and not any patterns. e.g. to ignore both eslint and eslint-config-base you would add this to your config:

{
  "ignoreDeps": ["eslint", "eslint-config-base"]
}

The above is the same as if you wrote this package rule:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["eslint", "eslint-config-base"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

ignorePaths

Renovate will extract dependencies from every file it finds in a repository, unless that file is explicitly ignored. With this setting you can selectively ignore package files that would normally be "autodiscovered" and updated by Renovate.

For instance if you have a project with an "examples/" directory you wish to ignore:

{
  "ignorePaths": ["**/examples/**"]
}

Renovate's default ignore is node_modules and bower_components only. If you are extending from the popular config:recommended preset then it adds ignore patterns for vendor, examples, test(s) and fixtures directories too.

ignorePlugins

Set this to true if running plugins causes problems. Applicable for Composer only for now.

ignorePrAuthor

This is usually needed if someone needs to migrate bot accounts, including from the Mend Renovate App to self-hosted. An additional use case is for GitLab users of project or group access tokens who need to rotate them.

If ignorePrAuthor is configured to true, it means Renovate will fetch the entire list of repository PRs instead of optimizing to fetch only those PRs which it created itself. You should only want to enable this if you are changing the bot account (e.g. from @old-bot to @new-bot) and want @new-bot to find and update any existing PRs created by @old-bot.

Setting this field to true in Github or GitLab will also mean that all Issues will be fetched instead of only those by the bot itself.

ignorePresets

Use this if you are extending a complex preset but don't want to use every "sub preset" that it includes. For example, consider this config:

{
  "extends": ["config:recommended"],
  "ignorePresets": ["group:monorepos"]
}

It would take the entire "config:recommended" preset - which has a lot of sub-presets - but ignore the "group:monorepos" rule.

ignoreReviewers

By default, Renovate does not add assignees or reviewers to PRs which are configured for automerge. If tests have failed, Renovate then does add them, but only if the assignees and reviewers list is empty. In the case that a user is automatically added as reviewer (such as Renovate Approve bot) and you want to ignore it for the purpose of this decision, add it to the ignoreReviewers list.

{
  "reviewers": ["foo"],
  "ignoreReviewers": ["renovate-approve"]
}

ignoreScripts

Applicable for npm, bun, Composer and Copier only for now. Set this to true if running scripts causes problems.

ignoreTests

Currently Renovate's default behavior is to only automerge if every status check has succeeded.

Setting this option to true means that Renovate will ignore all status checks. You can set this if you don't have any status checks but still want Renovate to automerge PRs. Beware: configuring Renovate to automerge without any tests can lead to broken builds on your base branch, please think again before enabling this!

ignoreUnstable

By default, Renovate won't update any package versions to unstable versions (e.g. 4.0.0-rc3) unless the current version has the same major.minor.patch and was already unstable (e.g. it was already on 4.0.0-rc2). Renovate will also not "jump" unstable versions automatically, e.g. if you are on 4.0.0-rc2 and newer versions 4.0.0 and 4.1.0-alpha.1 exist then Renovate will update you to 4.0.0 only. If you need to force permanent unstable updates for a package, you can add a package rule setting ignoreUnstable to false. In that case you will usually also want to set respectLatest to false so that Renovate considers versions ahead of latest.

Also check out the followTag configuration option above if you wish Renovate to keep you pinned to a particular release tag.

includePaths

If you wish for Renovate to process only select paths in the repository, use includePaths.

Alternatively, if you need to exclude certain paths in the repository then consider ignorePaths instead. If you are more interested in including only certain package managers (e.g. npm), then consider enabledManagers instead.

internalChecksAsSuccess

By default, internal Renovate checks such as renovate/stability-days are not counted towards a branch being "green" or not. This is primarily to prevent automerge when the only check is a passing Renovate check.

Internal checks will always be counted/considered if they are in pending or failed states. If there are multiple passing checks for a branch, including non-Renovate ones, then this setting won't make any difference.

Change this setting to true if you want to use internal Renovate checks towards a passing branch result.

internalChecksFilter

This setting determines whether Renovate controls when and how filtering of internal checks are performed, particularly when multiple versions of the same update type are available. Currently this applies to the minimumReleaseAge check only.

• none: No filtering will be performed, and the highest release will be used regardless of whether it's pending or not
• strict: All pending releases will be filtered. PRs will be skipped unless a non-pending version is available
• flexible: Similar to strict, but in the case where all versions are pending then a PR will be created with the highest pending version

The flexible mode can result in "flapping" of Pull Requests, for example: a pending PR with version 1.0.3 is first released but then downgraded to 1.0.2 once it passes minimumReleaseAge. We recommend that you use the strict mode, and enable the dependencyDashboard so that you can see suppressed PRs.

keepUpdatedLabel

On supported platforms you may add a label to a PR so that Renovate recreates/rebases the PR when the branch falls behind the base branch. Adding the keepUpdatedLabel label to a PR makes Renovate behave as if rebaseWhen were set to behind-base-branch, but only for the given PR. Renovate does not remove the label from the PR after it finishes rebasing. This is different from the rebaseLabel option, where Renovate removes the label from the PR after rebasing.

keepUpdatedLabel can be useful when you have approved certain PRs and want Renovate to keep the PRs up-to-date until you're ready to merge them. The setting keepUpdatedLabel is best used in this scenario:

• By default, you configure rebaseWhen to never or conflicted to reduce rebasing
• Sometimes, you want Renovate to keep specific PRs up-to-date with their base branch (equivalent to rebaseWhen=behind-base-branch)

labels

By default, Renovate won't add any labels to PRs. If you want Renovate to add labels to PRs it creates then define a labels array of one or more label strings. If you want the same label(s) for every PR then you can configure it at the top level of config. However you can also fully override them on a per-package basis.

Consider this example:

{
  "labels": ["dependencies"],
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["/eslint/"],
      "labels": ["linting"]
    }
  ]
}

With the above config, every PR raised by Renovate will have the label dependencies while PRs containing eslint-related packages will instead have the label linting.

Behavior details:

• On GitHub, GitLab and Gitea: Renovate will keep PR labels in sync with configured labels, provided that no other user or bot has made changes to the labels after PR creation. If labels are changed by any other account, Renovate will stop making further changes.
• For other platforms, Renovate will add labels only at time of PR creation and not update them after that.

The labels array is non-mergeable, meaning if multiple packageRules match then Renovate uses the last value for labels. If you want to add/combine labels, use the addLabels config option, which is mergeable.

!!! note Keep your labels within the maximum character limit for your Git hosting platform. Renovate usually truncates labels to 50 characters, except for GitLab, which has a 255 character limit.

lockFileMaintenance

You can use lockFileMaintenance to refresh lock files to keep them up-to-date.

When Renovate performs lockFileMaintenance it deletes the lock file and runs the relevant package manager. That package manager creates a new lock file, where all dependency versions are updated to the latest version. Renovate then commits that lock file to the update branch and creates the lock file update PR.

Supported lock files:

• .terraform.lock.hcl
• Cargo.lock
• Chart.lock
• composer.lock
• flake.lock
• Gemfile.lock
• gradle.lockfile
• jsonnetfile.lock.json
• manifest.toml
• package-lock.json
• packages.lock.json
• pdm.lock
• Pipfile.lock
• pnpm-lock.yaml
• poetry.lock
• pubspec.lock
• pyproject.toml
• requirements.txt
• yarn.lock

Support for new lock files may be added via feature request.

By default, lockFileMaintenance is disabled. To enable lockFileMaintenance add this to your configuration:

{
  "lockFileMaintenance": { "enabled": true }
}

To reduce "noise" in the repository, Renovate performs lockFileMaintenance "before 4am on monday", i.e. to achieve once-per-week semantics. Depending on its running schedule, Renovate may run a few times within that time window - even possibly updating the lock file more than once - but it hopefully leaves enough time for tests to run and automerge to apply, if configured.

logLevelRemap

This option allows you to remap log levels for specific messages.

Be careful with remapping warn or error messages to lower log levels, as it may hide important information.

{
  "logLevelRemap": [
    {
      "matchMessage": "/^pip-compile:/",
      "newLogLevel": "info"
    },
    {
      "matchMessage": "Package lookup error",
      "newLogLevel": "warn"
    },
    {
      "matchMessage": "/^Please upgrade the version of Node.js/",
      "newLogLevel": "info"
    }
  ]
}

major

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to major updates.

milestone

If set to the number of an existing GitHub milestone, Renovate will add that milestone to its PR. Renovate will only add a milestone when it creates the PR.

{
  "milestone": 12
}

minimumReleaseAge

This feature used to be called stabilityDays.

If minimumReleaseAge is set to a time duration and the update has a release timestamp header, then Renovate will check if the set duration has passed.

Note: Renovate will wait for the set duration to pass for each separate version. Renovate does not wait until the package has seen no releases for x time-duration(minimumReleaseAge).

Do not use minimumReleaseAge to slow down fast releasing project updates. Instead setup a custom schedule for that package, read our selective-scheduling help to learn how.

When the time passed since the release is less than the set minimumReleaseAge: Renovate adds a "pending" status check to that update's branch. After enough days have passed: Renovate replaces the "pending" status with a "passing" status check.

The datasource that Renovate uses must have a release timestamp for the minimumReleaseAge config option to work. Some datasources may have a release timestamp, but in a format that's Renovate does not support. In those cases a feature request needs to be implemented.

!!! warning "Warning for Maven users" For minimumReleaseAge to work, the Maven source must return reliable last-modified headers.

!!! note Configuring this option will add a renovate/stability-days option to the status checks.

Examples of how you can use minimumReleaseAge:

Suppress branch/PR creation for X days

If you use minimumReleaseAge=3 days and internalChecksFilter="strict" then Renovate only creates branches when 3 (or more days) have passed since the version was released. We recommend you set dependencyDashboard=true, so you can see these pending PRs.

Prevent holding broken npm packages

npm packages less than 72 hours (3 days) old can be unpublished from the npm registry, which could result in a service impact if you have already updated to it. Set minimumReleaseAge to 3 days for npm packages to prevent relying on a package that can be removed from the registry:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["npm"],
      "minimumReleaseAge": "3 days"
    }
  ]
}

Await X time duration before Automerging

If you enable automerge and minimumReleaseAge, Renovate will create PRs immediately, but only automerge them when the minimumReleaseAge time-duration has passed.

Renovate adds a "renovate/stability-days" pending status check to each branch/PR. This pending check prevents the branch going green to automerge before the time has passed.

minor

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to minor updates.

mode

This configuration option was created primarily for use with Mend's hosted app, but can also be useful for some self-hosted use cases.

It enables a new silent mode to allow repos to be scanned for updates and for users to be able to request such updates be opened in PRs on demand through the Mend UI, without needing the Dependency Dashboard issue in the repo.

Although similar, the options mode=silent and dryRun can be used together. When both are configured, dryRun takes precedence, so for example PRs won't be created.

Configuring silent mode is quite similar to dryRun=lookup except:

• It will bypass onboarding checks (unlike when performing a dry run on a non-onboarded repo) similar to requireConfig=optional
• It can create branches/PRs if checkedBranches is set
• It will keep any existing branches up-to-date (e.g. ones created previously using checkedBranches)

When in silent mode Renovate will:

• not create or update any Issue: even the Dependency Dashboard or Config Warning Issues will stay as-is
• not prune or close any existing Issues
• not create any Config Migration PRs, even if you explictly enabled Config Migration PRs in your Renovate config

npmToken

See Private npm module support for details on how this is used. Typically you would encrypt it and put it inside the encrypted object.

npmrc

See Private npm module support for details on how this is used.

npmrcMerge

This option exists to provide flexibility about whether npmrc strings in config should override .npmrc files in the repo, or be merged with them. In some situations you need the ability to force override .npmrc contents in a repo (npmrcMerge=false) while in others you might want to simply supplement the settings already in the .npmrc (npmrcMerge=true). A use case for the latter is if you are a Renovate bot admin and wish to provide a default token for npmjs.org without removing any other .npmrc settings which individual repositories have configured (such as scopes/registries).

If false (default), it means that defining config.npmrc will result in any .npmrc file in the repo being overridden and its values ignored. If configured to true, it means that any .npmrc file in the repo will have config.npmrc prepended to it before running npm.

osvVulnerabilityAlerts

Renovate integrates with OSV, an open-source vulnerability database, to check if extracted dependencies have known vulnerabilities. Set osvVulnerabilityAlerts to true to get pull requests with vulnerability fixes (once they are available).

You will only get OSV-based vulnerability alerts for direct dependencies. Renovate only queries the OSV database for dependencies that use one of these datasources:

• crate
• go
• hex
• maven
• npm
• nuget
• packagist
• pypi
• rubygems

packageRules

packageRules is a powerful feature that lets you apply rules to individual packages or to groups of packages using regex pattern matching.

packageRules is a collection of rules, that are all evaluated. If multiple rules match a dependency, configurations from matching rules will be merged together. The order of rules matters, because later rules may override configuration options from earlier ones, if they both specify the same option.

The matching process for a package rule:

• Each package rule must include at least one match... matcher.
• If multiple matchers are included in one package rule, all of them must match.
• Each matcher must contain at least one pattern. Some matchers allow both positive and negative patterns.
• If a matcher includes any positive patterns, it must match at least one of them.
• A matcher returns false if it matches any negative pattern, even if a positive match also occurred.

For more details on positive and negative pattern syntax see Renovate's string pattern matching documentation.

Here is an example if you want to group together all packages starting with eslint into a single branch/PR:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["eslint**"],
      "groupName": "eslint packages"
    }
  ]
}

Note how the above uses matchPackageNames with a prefix pattern.

Here's an example config to limit the "noisy" aws-sdk package to weekly updates:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["aws-sdk"],
      "schedule": ["after 9pm on sunday"]
    }
  ]
}

For Maven dependencies, the package name is <groupId:artefactId>, e.g. "matchPackageNames": ["com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream"]

Note how the above uses an exact match string for matchPackageNames instead of a pattern However you can mix together both patterns and exact matches in the same package rule and the rule will be applied if either match. Example:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["neutrino", "@neutrino/**"],
      "groupName": "neutrino monorepo"
    }
  ]
}

The above rule will group together the neutrino package and any package starting with @neutrino/.

File name matches are convenient to use if you wish to apply configuration rules to certain package or lock files using patterns. For example, if you have an examples directory and you want all updates to those examples to use the chore prefix instead of fix, then you could add this configuration:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchFileNames": ["examples/**"],
      "extends": [":semanticCommitTypeAll(chore)"]
    }
  ]
}

If you wish to limit Renovate to apply configuration rules to certain files in the root repository directory, you have to use matchFileNames with a minimatch pattern (which can include an exact file name match). For example you have multiple package.json and want to use dependencyDashboardApproval only on the root package.json:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchFileNames": ["package.json"],
      "dependencyDashboardApproval": true
    }
  ]
}

!!! tip Order your packageRules so the least important rules are at the top, and the most important rules at the bottom. This way important rules override settings from earlier rules if needed.

!!! warning Avoid nesting any object-type configuration in a packageRules array, such as a major or minor block.

allowedVersions

You can use allowedVersions - usually within a packageRules entry - to limit how far to upgrade a dependency.

For example, if you want to upgrade to Angular v1.5 but not to angular v1.6 or higher, you could set allowedVersions to <= 1.5 or < 1.6.0:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["angular"],
      "allowedVersions": "<=1.5"
    }
  ]
}

Renovate calculates the valid syntax for this at runtime, because it depends on the dynamic versioning scheme.

Using regular expressions

You can use Regular Expressions in the allowedVersion config. You must begin and end your Regular Expression with the / character!

For example, this config only allows 3 or 4-part versions, without any prefixes in the version:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream"],
      "allowedVersions": "/^[0-9]+\\.[0-9]+\\.[0-9]+(\\.[0-9]+)?$/"
    }
  ]
}

Again: note how the Regular Expression begins and ends with the / character.

Ignore versions with negated regex syntax

You can use a special negated regex syntax to ignore certain versions. You must use the !/ / syntax, like this:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["chalk"],
      "allowedVersions": "!/java$/"
    }
  ]
}

changelogUrl

Sometimes Renovate does not show the correct changelog for a package. As a workaround for this problem, you can give Renovate the URL to the changelog with the changelogUrl config option. When set, Renovate will put a link to the changelogs in the Renovate PR body.

Renovate does not show the complete changelogs from the changelogUrl in its PR body text, you only get the URL from Renovate. To read the changelogs you must use the link.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["dummy"],
      "changelogUrl": "https://github.com/org/dummy"
    }
  ]
}

!!! note Renovate can fetch changelogs from Bitbucket, Gitea (Forgejo), GitHub and GitLab platforms only, and setting the URL to an unsupported host/platform type won't change that.

For more details on supported syntax see Renovate's string pattern matching documentation.

matchBaseBranches

Use this field to restrict rules to a particular branch. e.g.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchBaseBranches": ["main"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["!/^eslint/"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

This field also supports Regular Expressions if they begin and end with /. e.g.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchBaseBranches": ["/^release/.*/"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["!/^eslint/"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

matchCategories

Use matchCategories to restrict rules to a particular language or group. Matching is done using "any" logic, i.e. "match any of the following categories". The categories can be found in the manager documentation.

!!! note Rules with matchCategories are only applied after extraction of dependencies. If you want to configure which managers are being extracted at all, use enabledManagers instead.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchCategories": ["python"],
      "addLabels": ["py"]
    }
  ]
}

matchConfidence

!!! warning This configuration option needs a Mend API key, and is in private beta testing only. API keys are not available for free or via the renovatebot/renovate repository.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchConfidence": ["high", "very high"],
      "groupName": "high merge confidence"
    }
  ]
}

matchCurrentAge

Use this field if you want to match packages based on the age of the current (existing, in-repo) version.

For example, if you want to group updates for dependencies where the existing version is more than 2 years old:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchCurrentAge": "> 2 years",
      "groupName": "old dependencies"
    }
  ]
}

The matchCurrentAge string must start with one of >, >=, < or <=.

Only one date part is supported, so you cannot do > 1 year 1 month. Instead you should do > 13 months.

!!! note We recommend you only use the words hour(s), day(s), week(s), month(s) and year(s) in your time ranges.

matchCurrentValue

This option is matched against the currentValue field of a dependency.

matchCurrentValue supports Regular Expressions and glob patterns. For example, the following enforces that updates from 1.* versions will be merged automatically:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchCurrentValue": "1.*",
      "automerge": true
    }
  ]
}

Regular Expressions must begin and end with /.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchCurrentValue": "/^1\\./"
    }
  ]
}

This field also supports a special negated regex syntax to ignore certain versions. Use the syntax !/ / like this:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchCurrentValue": "!/^0\\./"
    }
  ]
}

matchCurrentVersion

The currentVersion field will be one of the following (in order of preference):

• locked version if a lock file exists
• resolved version
• current value

Consider using instead matchCurrentValue if you wish to match against the raw string value of a dependency.

matchCurrentVersion can be an exact version or a version range:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchCurrentVersion": ">=1.0.0",
      "matchPackageNames": ["angular"]
    }
  ]
}

The syntax of the version range must follow the versioning scheme used by the matched package(s). This is usually defined by the manager which discovered them or by the default versioning for the package's datasource. For example, a Gradle package would typically need Gradle constraint syntax (e.g. [,7.0)) and not SemVer syntax (e.g. <7.0).

This field also supports Regular Expressions which must begin and end with /. For example, the following enforces that only 1.* versions will be used:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchCurrentVersion": "/^1\\./"
    }
  ]
}

This field also supports a special negated regex syntax to ignore certain versions. Use the syntax !/ / like this:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchCurrentVersion": "!/^0\\./"
    }
  ]
}

matchDatasources

Use this field to restrict rules to a particular datasource. e.g.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["orb"],
      "labels": ["circleci-orb!!"]
    }
  ]
}

matchDepNames

This field behaves the same as matchPackageNames except it matches against depName instead of packageName.

matchDepTypes

Use this field if you want to limit a packageRule to certain depType values. Invalid if used outside of a packageRule.

matchFileNames

Renovate will compare matchFileNames glob matching against the dependency's package file and also lock file if one exists.

The following example matches package.json but not package/frontend/package.json:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchFileNames": ["package.json"],
      "labels": ["npm"]
    }
  ]
}

The following example matches any package.json, including files like backend/package.json:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "description": "Group dependencies from package.json files",
      "matchFileNames": ["**/package.json"],
      "groupName": "All package.json changes"
    }
  ]
}

The following example matches any file in directories starting with app/:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "description": "Group all dependencies from the app directory",
      "matchFileNames": ["app/**"],
      "groupName": "App dependencies"
    }
  ]
}

It is recommended that you avoid using "negative" globs, like **/!(package.json), because such patterns might still return true if they match against the lock file name (e.g. package-lock.json).

matchJsonata

Use the matchJsonata field to define custom matching logic using JSONata query logic. Renovate will evaluate the provided JSONata expressions against the passed values (manager, packageName, etc.).

See the JSONata docs for more details on JSONata syntax.

Here are some example matchJsonata strings for inspiration:

$exists(deprecationMessage)
$exists(vulnerabilityFixVersion)
manager = 'dockerfile' and depType = 'final'
updateType = 'major' and newVersionAgeInDays < 7

matchJsonata accepts an array of strings, and will return true if any of those JSONata expressions evaluate to true.

matchManagers

Use this field to restrict rules to a particular package manager. e.g.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["node"],
      "matchManagers": ["dockerfile"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

matchMessage

matchNewValue

This option is matched against the newValue field of a dependency.

matchNewValue supports Regular Expressions and glob patterns. For example, the following enforces that updates to 1.* versions will be merged automatically:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchNewValue": "1.*",
      "automerge": true
    }
  ]
}

Regular Expressions must begin and end with /.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchNewValue": "/^1\\./"
    }
  ]
}

This field also supports a special negated regex syntax to ignore certain versions. Use the syntax !/ / like this:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["io.github.resilience4j**"],
      "matchNewValue": "!/^0\\./"
    }
  ]
}

For more details on this syntax see Renovate's string pattern matching documentation.

matchPackageNames

Use this field to match against the packageName field. This matching can be an exact match, Glob match, or Regular Expression match.

For more details on supported syntax see Renovate's string pattern matching documentation. Note that Glob matching (including exact name matching) is case-insensitive.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["npm"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["angular"],
      "rangeStrategy": "pin"
    }
  ]
}

The above will configure rangeStrategy to pin only for the npm package angular.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["@angular/**", "!@angular/abc"],
      "rangeStrategy": "replace"
    }
  ]
}

The above will set a replaceStrategy for any npm package which starts with @angular/ except @angular/abc.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["npm"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["/^angular/"],
      "groupName": "Angular"
    }
  ]
}

The above will group together any npm package which starts with the string angular.

matchRepositories

matchSourceUrls

Here's an example of where you use this to group together all packages from the Vue monorepo:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchSourceUrls": ["https://github.com/vuejs/vue"],
      "groupName": "Vue monorepo packages"
    }
  ]
}

For more details on supported syntax see Renovate's string pattern matching documentation.

matchUpdateTypes

Use matchUpdateTypes to match rules against types of updates. For example to apply a special label to major updates:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchUpdateTypes": ["major"],
      "labels": ["UPDATE-MAJOR"]
    }
  ]
}

For more details on supported syntax see Renovate's string pattern matching documentation.

!!! warning Packages that follow SemVer are allowed to make breaking changes in any 0.x version, even patch and minor. Check if you're using any 0.x package, and see if you need custom packageRules for it. When setting up automerge for dependencies, make sure to stop accidental automerges of 0.x versions. Read the automerge non-major updates docs for a config example that blocks 0.x updates.

Tokens can be configured via hostRules using the "merge-confidence" hostType:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "hostType": "merge-confidence",
      "token": "********"
    }
  ]
}

overrideDatasource

If a particular datasource/packageName combination has a lookup problem, you may be able to fix it by changing datasource and potentially also packageName. Here is an example:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["renovate/renovate"],
      "overrideDatasource": "npm",
      "overridePackageName": "renovate"
    }
  ]
}

overrideDatasource does not support template compilation. Be cautious as using this setting incorrectly could break all lookups.

overrideDepName

Be careful using this feature because it may cause undesirable changes such as to branch names.

In Renovate terminology, packageName is the exact package name needing to be looked up on a registry, while depName is essentially the "pretty" name. For example, the packageName is docker.io/library/node while the depName might be node for short.

depName is used in PR titles as well as branch names, so changes to depName will have effects on those.

overrideDepName supports template compilation. Example:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "overrideDepName": "{{replace 'docker.io/library/' '' depName}}"
    }
  ]
}

Be cautious as using this setting incorrectly could break all lookups.

overridePackageName

See the overrideDatasource documentation for an example of use. overridePackageName supports template compilation.

Be cautious as using this setting incorrectly could break all lookups.

prPriority

Sometimes Renovate needs to rate limit its creation of PRs, e.g. hourly or concurrent PR limits. By default, Renovate sorts/prioritizes based on the update type, going from smallest update to biggest update. Renovate creates update PRs in this order:

1. pinDigest
2. pin
3. digest
4. patch
5. minor
6. major

If you have dependencies that are more or less important than others then you can use the prPriority field for PR sorting. The default value is 0, so setting a negative value will make dependencies sort last, while higher values sort first.

Here's an example of how you would define PR priority so that devDependencies are raised last and react is raised first:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDepTypes": ["devDependencies"],
      "prPriority": -1
    },
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["react"],
      "prPriority": 5
    }
  ]
}

replacementName

This config option only works with some managers. We're working to support more managers, subscribe to issue renovatebot/renovate#14149 to follow our progress.

Managers which do not support replacement:

• bazel
• git-submodules
• gomod
• gradle
• homebrew
• maven
• regex
• sbt

Use the replacementName config option to set the name of a replacement package.

Can be used in combination with replacementVersion.

You can suggest a new community package rule by editing the replacements.json file on the Renovate repository and opening a pull request.

replacementNameTemplate

!!! note replacementName will take precedence if used within the same package rule.

Use the replacementNameTemplate config option to control the replacement name.

Use the triple brace {{{ }}} notation to avoid Handlebars escaping any special characters.

For example, the following package rule can be used to replace the registry for docker images:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["docker.io/**"],
      "replacementNameTemplate": "{{{replace 'docker\\.io/' 'ghcr.io/' packageName}}}"
    }
  ]
}

Or, to add a registry prefix to any docker images that do not contain an explicit registry:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "description": "official images",
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["/^[a-z-]+$/"],
      "replacementNameTemplate": "some.registry.org/library/{{{packageName}}}"
    },
    {
      "description": "non-official images",
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["/^[a-z-]+/[a-z-]+$/"],
      "replacementNameTemplate": "some.registry.org/{{{packageName}}}"
    }
  ]
}

replacementVersion

This config option only works with some managers. We're working to support more managers, subscribe to issue renovatebot/renovate#14149 to follow our progress. For a list of managers which do not support replacement read the replacementName config option docs.

Use the replacementVersion config option to set the version of a replacement package. Must be used with replacementName. For example to replace the npm package jade with version 2.0.0 of the package pug:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["npm"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["jade"],
      "replacementName": "pug",
      "replacementVersion": "2.0.0"
    }
  ]
}

sourceDirectory

Use this field to set the directory in which the package is present at the source of the package.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["dummy"],
      "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/bitnami/charts",
      "sourceDirectory": "bitnami/kube-prometheus"
    }
  ]
}

!!! note sourceDirectory should be only be configured along with sourceUrl.

sourceUrl

Use this field to set the source URL for a package, including overriding an existing one. Source URLs are necessary to link to the source of the package and in order to look up changelogs.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["dummy"],
      "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/org/dummy"
    }
  ]
}

patch

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to patch updates.

pin

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to PRs that pin dependencies.

pinDigest

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to PRs that pin digests.

pinDigests

If enabled Renovate will pin Docker images or GitHub Actions by means of their SHA256 digest and not only by tag so that they are immutable.

platformAutomerge

!!! note If you use the default platformAutomerge=true then you should enable your Git hosting platform's capabilities to enforce test passing before PR merge. If you don't do this, the platform might merge Renovate PRs even if the repository's tests haven't started, are in still in progress, or possibly even when they have failed. On GitHub this is called "Require status checks before merging", which you can find in the "Branch protection rules" section of the settings for your repository. GitHub docs, about protected branches GitHub docs, require status checks before merging If you're using another platform, search their documentation for a similar feature.

If you have enabled automerge and set automergeType=pr in the Renovate config, then leaving platformAutomerge as true speeds up merging via the platform's native automerge functionality.

On GitHub and GitLab, Renovate re-enables the PR for platform-native automerge whenever it's rebased.

platformAutomerge will configure PRs to be merged after all (if any) branch policies have been met. This option is available for Azure, Gitea, GitHub and GitLab. It falls back to Renovate-based automerge if the platform-native automerge is not available.

You can also fine-tune the behavior by setting packageRules if you want to use it selectively (e.g. per-package).

Note that the outcome of rebaseWhen=auto can differ when platformAutomerge=true. Normally when you set rebaseWhen=auto Renovate rebases any branch that's behind the base branch automatically, and some people rely on that. This behavior is no longer guaranteed when platformAutomerge is true because the platform might automerge a branch which is not up-to-date. For example, GitHub might automerge a Renovate branch even if it's behind the base branch at the time.

Please check platform specific docs for version requirements.

To learn how to use GitHub's Merge Queue feature with Renovate, read our Key Concepts, Automerge, GitHub Merge Queue docs.

platformCommit

Only use this option if you run Renovate as a GitHub App. It does not apply when you use a Personal Access Token as credential.

When platformCommit is enabled, Renovate will create commits with GitHub's API instead of using git directly. This way Renovate can use GitHub's Commit signing support for bots and other GitHub Apps feature.

!!! note When using platform commits, GitHub determines the git author string to use and Renovate's own gitAuthor is ignored.

postUpdateOptions

Table with options:

Name	Description
bundlerConservative	Enable conservative mode for bundler (Ruby dependencies). This will only update the immediate dependency in the lockfile instead of all subdependencies.
gomodMassage	Enable massaging replace directives before calling go commands.
gomodTidy	Run go mod tidy after Go module updates. This is implicitly enabled for major module updates when gomodUpdateImportPaths is enabled.
gomodTidy1.17	Run go mod tidy -compat=1.17 after Go module updates.
gomodTidyE	Run go mod tidy -e after Go module updates.
gomodUpdateImportPaths	Update source import paths on major module updates, using mod.
gomodSkipVendor	Never run go mod vendor after Go module updates.
helmUpdateSubChartArchives	Update subchart archives in the /charts folder.
npmDedupe	Run npm install with --prefer-dedupe for npm >= 7 or npm dedupe after package-lock.json update for npm <= 6.
pnpmDedupe	Run pnpm dedupe --config.ignore-scripts=true after pnpm-lock.yaml updates.
yarnDedupeFewer	Run yarn-deduplicate --strategy fewer after yarn.lock updates.
yarnDedupeHighest	Run yarn-deduplicate --strategy highest (yarn dedupe --strategy highest for Yarn >=2.2.0) after yarn.lock updates.

postUpgradeTasks

!!! note Post-upgrade tasks can only be used on self-hosted Renovate instances.

Post-upgrade tasks are commands that are executed by Renovate after a dependency has been updated but before the commit is created. The intention is to run any other command line tools that would modify existing files or generate new files when a dependency changes.

Each command must match at least one of the patterns defined in allowedPostUpgradeCommands (a global-only configuration option) in order to be executed. If the list of allowed tasks is empty then no tasks will be executed.

e.g.

{
  "postUpgradeTasks": {
    "commands": ["tslint --fix"],
    "fileFilters": ["yarn.lock", "**/*.js"],
    "executionMode": "update"
  }
}

The postUpgradeTasks configuration consists of three fields:

commands

A list of commands that are executed after Renovate has updated a dependency but before the commit is made.

You can use variable templating in your commands as long as allowPostUpgradeCommandTemplating is enabled.

!!! note Do not use git add in your commands to add new files to be tracked, add them by including them in your fileFilters instead.

executionMode

Defaults to update, but can also be set to branch. This sets the level the postUpgradeTask runs on, if set to update the postUpgradeTask will be executed for every dependency on the branch. If set to branch the postUpgradeTask is executed for the whole branch.

fileFilters

A list of glob-style matchers that determine which files will be included in the final commit made by Renovate. Dotfiles are included.

Optional field which defaults to any non-ignored file in the repo (**/* glob pattern). Specify a custom value for this if you wish to exclude certain files which are modified by your postUpgradeTasks and you don't want committed.

prBodyColumns

Use this array to provide a list of column names you wish to include in the PR tables.

{
  "prBodyColumns": [
    "Package",
    "Update",
    "Type",
    "New value",
    "Package file",
    "References"
  ]
}

!!! note "Package file" is predefined in the default prBodyDefinitions object so does not require a definition before it can be used.

prBodyDefinitions

You can configure this object to either:

• modify the template for an existing table column in PR bodies, or
• add a definition for a new/additional column.

{
  "prBodyDefinitions": {
    "Package": "`{{{depName}}}`"
  }
}

{
  "prBodyDefinitions": {
    "Sourcegraph": "[![code search for \"{{{depName}}}\"](https://sourcegraph.com/search/badge?q=repo:%5Egithub%5C.com/{{{repository}}}%24+case:yes+-file:package%28-lock%29%3F%5C.json+{{{depName}}}&label=matches)](https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=repo:%5Egithub%5C.com/{{{repository}}}%24+case:yes+-file:package%28-lock%29%3F%5C.json+{{{depName}}})"
  },
  "prBodyColumns": [
    "Package",
    "Update",
    "New value",
    "References",
    "Sourcegraph"
  ]
}

!!! tip Columns must also be included in the prBodyColumns array in order to be used, so that's why it's included above in the example.

prBodyNotes

Use this field to add custom content inside PR bodies, including conditionally.

{
  "prBodyNotes": ["{{#if isMajor}}:warning: MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR :warning:{{/if}}"]
}

prBodyTemplate

The available sections are:

• header
• table
• warnings
• notes
• changelogs
• configDescription
• controls
• footer

prConcurrentLimit

This setting - if enabled - limits Renovate to a maximum of x concurrent PRs open at any time.

This limit is enforced on a per-repository basis.

!!! note Renovate always creates security PRs, even if the concurrent PR limit is already reached. Security PRs have [SECURITY] in their PR title.

prCreation

This setting tells Renovate when to create PRs:

• immediate (default): Renovate creates PRs immediately after creating the corresponding branch
• not-pending: Renovate waits until status checks have completed (passed or failed) before raising the PR
• status-success: Renovate only creates PRs if/when the the test pass
• approval: Renovate creates branches for updates immediately, but creates the PR after getting Dependency Dashboard approval

When prCreation is set to immediate, you'll get a Pull Request and possible associated notification right away when a new update is available. You'll have to wait until the checks have been performed, before you can decide if you want to merge the PR.

When prCreation is set to not-pending, Renovate creates the PR only once all tests have passed or failed. When you get the PR notification, you can take action immediately, as you have the full test results. If there are no checks associated, Renovate will create the PR once 24 hours have elapsed since creation of the commit.

When prCreation is set to status-success, Renovate creates the PR only if all tests have passed. When a branch remains without PR due to a failing test: select the corresponding PR from the Dependency Dashboard, and push your fixes to the branch.

When prCreation is set to approval, Renovate creates the PR only when approved via the Dependency Dashboard. Renovate still creates the branch immediately.

!!! note For all cases of non-immediate PR creation, Renovate doesn't run instantly once tests complete. Instead, Renovate create the PR on its next run after the relevant tests have completed, so there will be some delay.

!!! warning If you set prCreation=approval you must not use dependencyDashboardApproval=true!

prFooter

prHeader

prHourlyLimit

This config option slows down the rate at which Renovate creates PRs.

Slowing Renovate down can be handy when you're onboarding a repository with a lot of dependencies. What may happen if you don't set a prHourlyLimit:

1. Renovate creates an Onboarding PR
2. You merge the onboarding PR to activate Renovate
3. Renovate creates a "Pin Dependencies" PR (if needed)
4. You merge the "Pin Dependencies" PR
5. Renovate creates every single upgrade PR needed, which can be a lot

The above may cause:

• Renovate bot's PRs to overwhelm your CI systems
• a lot of test runs, because branches are rebased each time you merge a PR

To prevent these problems you can set prHourlyLimit to a value like 1 or 2. Renovate will only create that many PRs within each hourly period (:00 through :59). You still get all the PRs in a reasonable time, perhaps over a day or so. Now you can merge the PRs at a do-able rate, once the tests pass.

!!! tip The prHourlyLimit setting does not limit the number of concurrently open PRs, only the rate at which PRs are created. The prHourlyLimit setting is enforced on a per-repository basis.

prNotPendingHours

If you configure prCreation=not-pending, then Renovate will wait until tests are non-pending (all pass or at least one fails) before creating PRs. However there are cases where PRs may remain in pending state forever, e.g. absence of tests or status checks that are configure to pending indefinitely. This is why we configured an upper limit for how long we wait until creating a PR.

!!! note If the option minimumReleaseAge is non-zero then Renovate disables the prNotPendingHours functionality.

prTitle

The PR title is important for some of Renovate's matching algorithms (e.g. determining whether to recreate a PR or not) so ideally don't modify it much.

prTitleStrict

There are certain scenarios where the default behavior appends extra context to the PR title.

These scenarios include if a baseBranch or if there is a grouped update and either separateMajorMinor or separateMinorPatch is true.

Using this option allows you to skip these default behaviors and use other templating methods to control the format of the PR title.

printConfig

This option is useful for troubleshooting, particularly if using presets. e.g. run renovate foo/bar --print-config > config.log and the fully-resolved config will be included in the log file.

pruneBranchAfterAutomerge

By default Renovate deletes, or "prunes", the branch after automerging. Set pruneBranchAfterAutomerge to false to keep the branch after automerging.

pruneStaleBranches

By default, Renovate will "prune" any of its own branches/PRs which it thinks are no longer needed. Such branches are referred to as "stale", and may be the result of Open, Merged, or Closed/Ignored PRs. It usually doesn't know why they're there, instead it simply knows that it has no need for them.

If a branch appears stale but has been modified by a different git author, then Renovate won't delete the branch or autoclose any associated PR. Instead, it will update the title to append " - abandoned" plus add a comment noting that autoclosing is skipped.

If a branch appears stale and hasn't been modified, then:

• If an Open PR exist for the branch, then Renovate will rename the PR to append " - autoclosed" before closing/abandoning it
• Renovate will delete the branch

You can configure pruneStaleBranches=false to disable deleting orphan branches and autoclosing PRs, but then you will be responsible for such branch/PR "cleanup" so it is not recommended.

rangeStrategy

Behavior:

• auto = Renovate decides (this will be done on a manager-by-manager basis)
• pin = convert ranges to exact versions, e.g. ^1.0.0 -> 1.1.0
• bump = e.g. bump the range even if the new version satisfies the existing range, e.g. ^1.0.0 -> ^1.1.0
• replace = Replace the range with a newer one if the new version falls outside it, and update nothing otherwise
• widen = Widen the range with newer one, e.g. ^1.0.0 -> ^1.0.0 || ^2.0.0
• update-lockfile = Update the lock file when in-range updates are available, otherwise replace for updates out of range. Works for bundler, cargo, composer, npm, yarn, pnpm, terraform and poetry so far
• in-range-only = Update the lock file when in-range updates are available, ignore package file updates

Renovate's "auto" strategy works like this for npm:

1. Widen peerDependencies
2. If an existing range already ends with an "or" operator like "^1.0.0 || ^2.0.0", then Renovate widens it into "^1.0.0 || ^2.0.0 || ^3.0.0"
3. Otherwise, if the update is outside the existing range, Renovate replaces the range. So "^2.0.0" is replaced by "^3.0.0"
4. Finally, if the update is in-range, Renovate will update the lockfile with the new exact version.

By default, Renovate assumes that if you are using ranges then it's because you want them to be wide/open. Renovate won't deliberately "narrow" any range by increasing the semver value inside.

For example, if your package.json specifies a value for left-pad of ^1.0.0 and the latest version on npmjs is 1.2.0, then Renovate won't change anything because 1.2.0 satisfies the range. If instead you'd prefer to be updated to ^1.2.0 in cases like this, then configure rangeStrategy to bump in your Renovate config.

This feature supports caret (^) and tilde (~) ranges only, like ^1.0.0 and ~1.0.0.

The in-range-only strategy may be useful if you want to leave the package file unchanged and only do update-lockfile within the existing range. The in-range-only strategy behaves like update-lockfile, but discards any updates where the new version of the dependency is not equal to the current version. We recommend you avoid using the in-range-only strategy unless you strictly need it. Using the in-range-only strategy may result in you being multiple releases behind without knowing it.

rebaseLabel

On supported platforms it is possible to add a label to a PR to manually request Renovate to recreate/rebase it. By default this label is "rebase" but you can configure it to anything you want by changing this rebaseLabel field.

rebaseWhen

Possible values and meanings:

• auto: Renovate will autodetect the best setting. It will use behind-base-branch if configured to automerge or repository has been set to require PRs to be up to date. Otherwise, conflicted will be used instead
• automerging: Renovate will use behind-base-branch if configured to automerge, Otherwise, never will be used instead
• never: Renovate will never rebase the branch or update it unless manually requested
• conflicted: Renovate will rebase only if the branch is conflicted
• behind-base-branch: Renovate will rebase whenever the branch falls 1 or more commit behind its base branch

rebaseWhen=conflicted is not recommended if you have enabled Renovate automerge, because:

• It could result in a broken base branch if two updates are merged one after another without testing the new versions together
• If you have enforced that PRs must be up-to-date before merging (e.g. using branch protection on GitHub), then automerge won't be possible as soon as a PR gets out-of-date but remains non-conflicted

It is also recommended to avoid rebaseWhen=never as it can result in conflicted branches with outdated PR descriptions and/or status checks.

Avoid setting rebaseWhen=never and then also setting prCreation=not-pending as this can prevent creation of PRs.

recreateWhen

This feature used to be called recreateClosed.

By default, Renovate detects if it proposed an update to a project before, and will not propose the same update again. For example the Webpack 3.x case described in the separateMajorMinor documentation. You can use recreateWhen to customize this behavior down to a per-package level. For example we override it to always in the following cases where branch names and PR titles must be reused:

• Package groups
• When pinning versions
• Lock file maintenance

You can select which behavior you want from Renovate:

• always: Recreates all closed or blocking PRs
• auto: The default option. Recreates only immortal PRs (default)
• never: No PR is recreated, doesn't matter if it is immortal or not

We recommend that you stick with the default setting for this option. Only change this setting if you really need to.

registryAliases

You can use the registryAliases object to set registry aliases. Renovate applies all registryAliases objects, from top to bottom.

This feature works with the following managers:

• ansible
• bitbucket-pipelines
• docker-compose
• dockerfile
• droneci
• flux
• gitlabci
• helm-requirements
• helm-values
• helmfile
• helmv3
• kubernetes
• terraform
• woodpecker

{
  "registryAliases": {
    "jfrogecosystem": "some.jfrog.mirror",
    "jfrog.com": "some.jfrog.mirror"
  }
}

{
  "gitlabci": {
    "registryAliases": {
      "$HARBOR_HOST/$HARBOR_PROJECT": "registry.example.com/proxy",
      "$HARBOR_HOST/tools": "registry.example.com/tools"
    }
  }
}

registryUrls

Usually Renovate is able to either (a) use the default registries for a datasource, or (b) automatically detect during the manager extract phase which custom registries are in use. In case there is a need to configure them manually, it can be done using this registryUrls field, typically using packageRules like so:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "registryUrls": ["https://docker.mycompany.domain"]
    }
  ]
}

The field supports multiple URLs but it is datasource-dependent on whether only the first is used or multiple.

replacement

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to PRs that replace dependencies.

respectLatest

Similar to ignoreUnstable, this option controls whether to update to versions that are greater than the version tagged as latest in the repository. By default, renovate will update to a version greater than latest only if the current version is itself past latest.

reviewers

Must be valid usernames.

Required reviewers on GitHub

If you're assigning a team to review on GitHub, you must use the prefix team: and add the last part of the team name. Say the full team name on GitHub is @organization/foo, then you'd set the config option like this:

{
  "reviewers": ["team:foo"]
}

Required reviewers on Azure DevOps

To mark a reviewer as required on Azure DevOps, you must use the prefix required:.

For example: if the username or team name is bar then you would set the config option like this:

{
  "reviewers": ["required:bar"]
}

reviewersFromCodeOwners

If enabled Renovate tries to determine PR reviewers by matching rules defined in a CODEOWNERS file against the changes in the PR.

Read the docs for your platform for details on syntax and allowed file locations:

• GitHub Docs, About code owners
• GitLab, Code Owners
• Bitbucket, Set up and use code owners

reviewersSampleSize

rollback

Add to this object if you wish to define rules that apply only to PRs that roll back versions.

rollbackPrs

There are times when a dependency version in use by a project gets removed from the registry. For some registries, existing releases or even whole packages can be removed or "yanked" at any time, while for some registries only very new or unused releases can be removed. Renovate's "rollback" feature exists to propose a downgrade to the next-highest release if the current release is no longer found in the registry.

Renovate does not create these rollback PRs by default, so this functionality needs to be opted-into. We recommend you do this selectively with packageRules and not globally.

schedule

The schedule option allows you to define times of the day, week or month when you are willing to allow Renovate to create branches.

Setting a schedule does not itself cause or trigger Renovate to run. It's like putting a sign on your office which says "DHL deliveries only accepted between 9-11am". Such a sign won't cause DHL to come to your office only at 9-11am, instead it simply means that if they come at any other time of the day then they'll honor the sign and skip you. It also means that if they rarely attempt between 9-11am then you'll often get no deliveries in a day.

Similarly, if you set too restrictive of a Renovate schedule and the chance of Renovate running on your repo during those hours is low, then you might find your dependency updates regularly skipped. For this reason we recommend you allow a time window of at least 3-4 hours in any schedule, unless your instance of Renovate is expected to run more frequently than that.

Renovate supports the standard Cron syntax, as well as deprecated support for a subset of Later syntax. We recommend you always use Cron syntax, due to its superior testing and robustness. Config support questions are no longer accepted for Later syntax problems - you will be recommended to use Cron instead.

The default value for schedule is "at any time", which is functionally the same as declaring a null schedule or * * * * * with Cron. i.e. Renovate will create Pull Requests at any time of any day, as needed.

The easiest way to define a schedule is to use a preset if one of them fits your requirements. See Schedule presets for details and feel free to request a new one in the source repository if you think it would help others.

Here are some example schedules and their Cron equivalent:

English description	Supported by Later?	Cron syntax
every weekend	Yes	* * * * 0,6
before 5:00am	Yes	* 0-4 * * *
after 10pm and before 5am every weekday	Yes	* 22-23,0-4 * * 1-5
on friday and saturday	Yes	* * * * 5,6
every 3 months on the first day of the month	Yes	* * 1 */3 *

!!! note For Cron schedules, you must use the * wildcard for the minutes value, as Renovate doesn't support minute granularity.

One example might be that you don't want Renovate to run during your typical business hours, so that your build machines don't get clogged up testing package.json updates. You could then configure a schedule like this at the repository level:

{
  "schedule": ["* 22-23,0-4 * * *", "* * * * 0,6"]
}

This would mean that Renovate can run for 7 hours each night, plus all the time on weekends. Note how the above example makes use of the "OR" logic of combining multiple schedules in the array.

It's common to use schedule in combination with timezone. You should configure updateNotScheduled=false if you want the schedule more strictly enforced so that updates to existing branches aren't pushed out of schedule. You can also configure automergeSchedule to limit the hours in which branches/PRs are automerged (if automerge is configured).

semanticCommitScope

By default you will see Angular-style commit prefixes like "chore(deps):". If you wish to change it to something else like "package" then it will look like "chore(package):". You can also use parentDir or baseDir to namespace your commits for monorepos e.g. "{{parentDir}}".

semanticCommitType

By default you will see Angular-style commit prefixes like "chore(deps):". If you wish to change it to something else like "ci" then it will look like "ci(deps):".

semanticCommits

If you are using a semantic prefix for your commits, then you will want to enable this setting. Although it's configurable to a package-level, it makes most sense to configure it at a repository level. If configured to enabled, then the semanticCommitScope and semanticCommitType fields will be used for each commit message and PR title.

Renovate autodetects if your repository is already using semantic commits or not and follows suit, so you only need to configure this if you wish to override Renovate's autodetected setting.

separateMajorMinor

Renovate's default behavior is to create a separate branch/PR if both minor and major version updates exist (note that your choice of rangeStrategy value can influence which updates exist in the first place however). For example, if you were using Webpack 2.0.0 and versions 2.1.0 and 3.0.0 were both available, then Renovate would create two PRs so that you have the choice whether to apply the minor update to 2.x or the major update of 3.x. If you were to apply the minor update then Renovate would keep updating the 3.x branch for you as well, e.g. if Webpack 3.0.1 or 3.1.0 were released. If instead you applied the 3.0.0 update then Renovate would clean up the unneeded 2.x branch for you on the next run.

It is recommended that you leave this option to true, because of the polite way that Renovate handles this. For example, let's say in the above example that you decided you wouldn't update to Webpack 3 for a long time and don't want to build/test every time a new 3.x version arrives. In that case, simply close the "Update Webpack to version 3.x" PR and it won't be recreated again even if subsequent Webpack 3.x versions are released. You can continue with Webpack 2.x for as long as you want and get any updates/patches that are made for it. Then eventually when you do want to update to Webpack 3.x you can make that update to package.json yourself and commit it to the base branch once it's tested. After that, Renovate will resume providing you updates to 3.x again! i.e. if you close a major upgrade PR then it won't come back again, but once you make the major upgrade yourself then Renovate will resume providing you with minor or patch updates.

This option also has priority over package groups configured by packageRule. So Renovate will propose separate PRs for major and minor updates of packages even if they are grouped. If you want to enforce grouped package updates, you need to set this option to false within the packageRule.

separateMinorPatch

By default, Renovate groups patch (1.0.x) and minor (1.x.0) releases into a single PR. For example: you are running version 1.0.0 of a package, which has two updates:

• 1.0.1, a patch type update
• 1.1.0, a minor type update

By default, Renovate creates a single PR for the 1.1.0 version.

If you want Renovate to create separate PRs for patch and minor upgrades, set separateMinorPatch to true. Getting separate updates from Renovate can be handy when you want to, for example, automerge patch updates but manually merge minor updates.

separateMultipleMajor

Configure this to true if you wish to get one PR for every separate major version upgrade of a dependency. e.g. if you are on webpack@v1 currently then default behavior is a PR for upgrading to webpack@v3 and not for webpack@v2. If this setting is true then you would get one PR for webpack@v2 and one for webpack@v3.

separateMultipleMinor

Enable this for dependencies when it is important to split updates into separate PRs per minor release stream (e.g. python).

For example, if you are on python@v3.9.0 currently, then by default Renovate creates a PR to upgrade you to the latest version such as python@v3.12.x. By default, Renovate skips versions in between, like python@v3.10.x.

But if you set separateMultipleMinor=true then you get separate PRs for each minor stream, like python@3.9.x, python@v3.10.x and python@v3.11.x, etc.

skipInstalls

By default, Renovate will use the most efficient approach to updating package files and lock files, which in most cases skips the need to perform a full module install by the bot. If this is set to false, then a full install of modules will be done. This is currently applicable to npm only, and only used in cases where bugs in npm result in incorrect lock files being updated.

statusCheckNames

You can customize the name/context of status checks that Renovate adds to commits/branches/PRs.

This option enables you to modify any existing status checks name/context, but adding new status checks this way is not supported. Setting the value to null or an empty string, effectively disables or skips that status check. This option is mergeable, which means you only have to specify the status checks that you want to modify.

{
  "statusCheckNames": {
    "minimumReleaseAge": "custom/stability-days",
    "mergeConfidence": "custom/merge-confidence-level"
  }
}

stopUpdatingLabel

This feature only works on supported platforms, check the table above.

If you want Renovate to stop updating a PR, you can apply a label to the PR. By default, Renovate listens to the label: "stop-updating".

You can set your own label name with the "stopUpdatingLabel" field:

{
  "stopUpdatingLabel": "take-a-break-renovate"
}

suppressNotifications

Use this field to suppress various types of warnings and other notifications from Renovate. For example:

{
  "suppressNotifications": ["prIgnoreNotification"]
}

The above config will suppress the comment which is added to a PR whenever you close a PR unmerged.

timezone

We recommend that you only configure the timezone option if both of these are true:

• you want to use the schedule feature
• and you want Renovate to evaluate the schedule in your timezone

Please see the above link for valid timezone names.

updateInternalDeps

Renovate defaults to skipping any internal package dependencies within monorepos. In such case dependency versions won't be updated by Renovate.

To opt in to letting Renovate update internal package versions normally, set this configuration option to true.

updateLockFiles

updateNotScheduled

When schedules are in use, it generally means "no updates". However there are cases where updates might be desirable - e.g. if you have configured prCreation=not-pending, or you have rebaseWhen=behind-base-branch and the base branch is updated so you want Renovate PRs to be rebased.

This defaults to true, meaning that Renovate will perform certain "desirable" updates to existing PRs even when outside of schedule. If you wish to disable all updates outside of scheduled hours then configure this field to false.

updatePinnedDependencies

By default, Renovate will try to update all detected dependencies, regardless of whether they are defined using pinned single versions (e.g. 1.2.3) or constraints/ranges (e.g. (^1.2.3). You can set this option to false if you wish to disable updating for pinned (single version) dependencies specifically.

useBaseBranchConfig

By default, Renovate will read config file from the default branch only and will ignore any config files in base branches. You can configure useBaseBranchConfig=merge to instruct Renovate to merge the config from each base branch over the top of the config in the default branch.

The config file name in the base branch must be the same as in the default branch and cannot be package.json. This scenario may be useful for testing the config changes in base branches instantly.

userStrings

When a PR is closed, Renovate posts a comment to let users know that future updates will be ignored. If you want, you can change the text in the comment with the userStrings config option.

You can edit these user-facing strings:

• ignoreDigest: Text of the PR comment for digest upgrades.
• ignoreMajor: Text of the PR comment for major upgrades.
• ignoreOther: Text of the PR comment for other (neither digest nor major) upgrades.
• ignoreTopic: Topic of the PR comment.

For example:

{
  "userStrings": {
    "ignoreTopic": "Custom topic for PR comment",
    "ignoreMajor": "Custom text for major upgrades.",
    "ignoreDigest": "Custom text for digest upgrades.",
    "ignoreOther": "Custom text for other upgrades."
  }
}

versionCompatibility

This option is used for advanced use cases where the version string embeds more data than just the version. It's typically used with docker and tags datasources.

Here are two examples:

• The image tag ghcr.io/umami-software/umami:postgresql-v1.37.0 embeds text like postgresql- as a prefix to the actual version to differentiate different DB types.
• Docker image tags like node:18.10.0-alpine embed the base image as a suffix to the version.

Here is an example of solving these types of cases:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["ghcr.io/umami-software/umami"],
      "versionCompatibility": "^(?<compatibility>.*)-(?<version>.*)$",
      "versioning": "semver"
    },
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["node"],
      "versionCompatibility": "^(?<version>[^-]+)(?<compatibility>-.*)?$",
      "versioning": "node"
    }
  ]
}

This feature is most useful when the currentValue is a version and not a range/constraint.

This feature can be used in combination with extractVersion although that's likely only a rare edge case. When combined, extractVersion is applied to datasource results first, and then versionCompatibility. extractVersion should be used when the raw version string returned by the datasource contains extra details (such as a v prefix) when compared to the value/version used within the repository.

During the lookup phase, Renovate evaluates the versionCompatibility regex against the currentValue string. If there is a match, the version part is stored internally temporarily as compareValue and the compatibility part stored as currentCompatibility. Storing currentCompatibility allows Renovate to reuse this value later to filter for new versions with the same compatibility. Renovate applies this compatibility check to datasource lookup results by passing both the versionCompatibility and currentCompatibility strings to a filter.

For a new version to be allowed, it must:

• Satisfy the versionCompatibility regex, and
• Have the same compatibility part as the currentValue

At this point, Renovate's core lookup logic is comparing versions to versions, and ignoring compatibility strings like -jre8. Finally, once updates are decided, Renovate restores the compatibility part to the newValue result.

versioning

Usually, each language or package manager has a specific type of "versioning": JavaScript uses npm's SemVer implementation, Python uses pep440, etc.

Renovate also uses custom versioning, like "docker" to address the most common way people tag versions using Docker, and "loose" as a fallback that tries SemVer first. Otherwise Renovate does its best to sort and compare.

By exposing versioning to config, you can override the default versioning for a package manager if needed. We do not recommend overriding the default versioning, but there are some cases such as Docker or Gradle where versioning is not strictly defined and you may need to specify the versioning type per-package.

Renovate supports 4-part versions (1.2.3.4) in full for the NuGet package manager. Other managers can use the "loose" versioning fallback: the first 3 parts are used as the version, all trailing parts are used for alphanumeric sorting.

vulnerabilityAlerts

Renovate can read GitHub's Vulnerability Alerts to customize its Pull Requests. For this to work, you must enable the Dependency graph, and Dependabot alerts. Follow these steps:

1. While logged in to GitHub, navigate to your repository
2. Select the "Settings" tab
3. Select "Code security and analysis" in the sidebar
4. Enable the "Dependency graph"
5. Enable "Dependabot alerts"
6. If you're running Renovate in app mode: make sure the app has read permissions for "Dependabot alerts". If you're the account administrator, browse to the app (for example the Mend Renovate App), select "Configure", and then scroll down to the "Permissions" section and make sure that read access to "Dependabot alerts" is mentioned

Once the above conditions are met, and you got one or more vulnerability alerts from GitHub for this repository, then Renovate tries to raise fix PRs.

You may use the vulnerabilityAlerts configuration object to customize vulnerability-fix PRs.

{
  "vulnerabilityAlerts": {
    "labels": ["security"],
    "automerge": true,
    "assignees": ["@rarkins"]
  }
}

!!! warning There's a small chance that a wrong vulnerability alert results in a flapping/looping vulnerability fix. If you allow Renovate to automerge vulnerability fixes, please check if the automerged fix is correct.

!!! note When Renovate creates a vulnerabilityAlerts PR, it ignores settings like prConcurrentLimit, branchConcurrentLimit, prHourlyLimit, or schedule. This means that Renovate always tries to create a vulnerabilityAlerts PR. In short: vulnerability alerts "skip the line".

To disable the vulnerability alerts feature, set enabled=false in a vulnerabilityAlerts config object, like this:

{
  "vulnerabilityAlerts": {
    "enabled": false
  }
}

!!! note If you want to raise only vulnerability fix PRs, you may use the security:only-security-updates preset.

vulnerabilityFixStrategy

When a vulnerability fix is available, Renovate will default to picking the lowest fixed version (vulnerabilityFixStrategy=lowest). For example, if the current version is 1.0.0, and a vulnerability is fixed in 1.1.0, while the latest version is 1.2.0, then Renovate will propose an update to 1.1.0 as the vulnerability fix.

If vulnerabilityFixStrategy=highest is configured then Renovate will use its normal strategy for picking upgrades, e.g. in the above example it will propose an update to 1.2.0 to fix the vulnerability.

{
  "vulnerabilityAlerts": {
    "vulnerabilityFixStrategy": "highest"
  }
}