This document describes all the configuration options you may configure in a `renovate.json` file or within a `"renovate"` section of your `package.json`. Note that any config in a `package.json` will apply only to that package file, so this is also one way you can specify different behaviour for different `package.json files`. Similarly, if you have a monorepo and want your config to apply to all package files then you need to define it in a `renovate.json`;
Also, be sure to check out Renovate's [shareabe config presets](/docs/configuration-reference/config-presets) to save yourself from reinventing any wheels.
If you have any questions about the below config options, or would like to get help/feedback about a config, please post it as an issue in [renovateapp/config-help](https://github.com/renovateapp/config-help) where it will be promptly answered.
By default, Renovate raises PRs but leaves them to someone/something else to merge them. By configuring this setting, you can enable Renovate to automerge branches or PRs itself, therefore reducing 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. In that case you will want to embed this setting inside `major`, `minor`, or `patch` configuration options. For example, you could add this to your `renovate.json` to automerge only non-major updates:
Also note that this option can be combined with other nested settings, such as dependency type. So for example you could elect to automerge all `devDependencies` only this way:
```json
"devDependencies": {
"automerge": true
}
```
Warning: GitHub currently has a bug where automerge won't work if a GitHub Organization has protected their master branch, and there is no way to configure around this. Hence, automerging will try and fail in such situations. This doc will be updated once that bug/limitation is fixed by GitHub.
Renovate will default to automerging after creating PRs, but you can override that to automerge _without_ PRs. There are two ways to merge branch upgrades: merge commits, and branch push.
Merge commits will employ the standard GitHub "merge commit" API, just like when you merge a PR with merge commit setting. The downside of this approach is that you will end up with merge commits and not a nice clean default branch!
Branch push employs GitHub's low-level `git` API to push the Renovate upgrade directly to the head of the base branch (e.g. `master`) to maintain a "clean" history. The downside of this approach is that it implicitly enables the `rebaseStalePrs` setting because otherwise we would risk pushing a bad commit to master. i.e. Renovate won't push the commit to base branch unless the branch is completely up-to-date with `master` and has passed tests, which means that if the default branch is getting updated regularly then it might take several rebases from Renovate until it has a branch commit that is safe to push to `master`.
For most projects, this should be left as default. An example use case for using this setting is a project who uses the default `master` branch for releases and a separate branch `next` for preparing for the next release. In that case, the project may prefer for Pull Requests from Renovate to be opened against the `next` branch instead of `master`.
You also may 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 instead of default.
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 set `branchPrefix` = `deps/`. Or if you wish to avoid forward slashes in branch names then you could use `renovate_` instead, for example.
It's recommended to use our default templates, but you may override branch name if you really wish. It's recommended to still keep `depName` and `newVersionMajor` in the branch name to make sure all other Renovate features can still work.
Renovate is enabled for all packages by default, but this setting allows you to disable Renovate for specific packages, dependency types, package files, or even for the whole repository.
To disable Renovate for all `eslint` packages, you can configure a package rule like:
```json
"packageRules": [
{
"packagePatterns": ["^eslint"],
"enabled": false
}
]
```
To disable Renovate for `dependencies` but keep it for `devDependencies` you could configure:
```json
"dependencies": {
"enabled": false
}
```
## excludedPackageNames
A list of package names inside a package rule which are to be excluded/ignored.
The default configuration for groups are essentially internal to Renovate and you normally shouldn't need to modify them. However, you may choose to _add_ settings to any group by defining your own `group` configuration object.
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 set the `groupName` field to something non-null.
By default, Renovate will "slugify" the groupName to determine the branch name. For example if you named your group "All eslint packages" then the branchName would be `renovate/all-eslint-packages`. If you wished to override this then you could set like this:
```json
"groupName": "eslint packages",
"groupSlug": "eslint"
```
And then the branchName would be `renovate/eslint` instead.
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:
```json
"ignoreDeps": ["eslint", "eslint-config-base"]
```
You could also configure this using `packageRules`, especially if you need patterns.
There may be times where an `.npmrc` file in your repository causes problems, such as during lock file generation. Set this to true and Renovate will ignore any `.npmrc` files it finds.
Using this setting, you can selectively ignore package files that you don't want Renovate autodiscovering. For instance if your repository has an "examples" directory of many package.json files that you don't want kept up to date.
By default, Renovate won't update any packages to unstable versions (e.g. `4.0.0-rc3`) unless the package version was _already_ unstable (e.g. it was already on `4.0.0-rc2`). If for some reason you wish to _force_ unstable updates on Renovate, you can set `ignoreUnstable` to `false`, but this is not recommended for most situations.
Add an array of 1 or more strings to `labels` and Renovate will apply these labels to any PR its created. Usually these will be a per-repository setting like "renovate", or "ready", or "dependencies", however you can configure them right down to per-package level.
## lazyGrouping
Use group names only when more than one upgrade is available.
The default behaviour for Renovate is to only use group names for branches and PRs when there's more than one dependency in a group. For example you may have defined a dependency group calls "All eslint packages" with a `packagePattern` of `^eslint`, but if the only upgrade available at the time is `eslint-config-airbnb` then it makes more sense for the PR to be named "Upgrade eslint-config-airbnb to version 2.1.4" than to name it "Upgrade All eslint packages". If ever this behaviour is undesirable then you can override it by setting this option to `false`.
By setting enabled=true, this means that the default behaviour is to "maintain" lock files for each `package.json` if they exist already. "Maintaining" a lock file means recreating it to get an up-to-date version and committing that. Supported lock files include `package-lock.json` (npm >= 5) and `yarn.lock` (yarn).
If you wish to disable this feature then you could add this to your configuration:
```json
"lockFileMaintenance": { "enabled": false }
```
To reduce "noise" in the repository, it defaults its schedule to "before 5am on monday", i.e. to achieve once per week semantics. Renovate may run a few times within that time - 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.
The `recreateClosed` setting is necessary to tell Renovate to override its default behaviour of never recreating a PR if the same-titled one previously existed, so do not modify this.
`commitMessage`, `prTitle` and `prBody` are custom templates to make sure that the branch and PR have names that make sense. You may override these with your own settings if you prefer.
## major
Configuration specific for major dependency updates.
See https://renovateapp.com/docs/deep-dives/private-modules for details on how this is used. Typically you would encrypt it and put it inside the `encrypted` object.
If left default then package file autodiscovery will be used, so only change this setting if you wish to manually specify a limited set of `package.json` files to renovate, or if package file autodiscovery is not finding all your `package.json` files.
Note: `package.json` autodiscovery works for any GitHub repository that isn't itself a fork of another (otherwise GitHub does not index forks for searching). Otherwise `renovate` will default to looking for `package.json` in the root directory of the repository and you will need to manually provision your list of package files.
Note how the above uses `packageNames` instead of `packagePatterns` because it is an exact match package name. This is the equivalent of defining `"packagePatterns": ["^aws\-sdk$"]` and hence much simpler. However you can mix together both `packageNames` and `packagePatterns` in the same package rule and the rule will be applied if _either_ match. Example:
This is a very important feature to consider, because not every repository's requirements are the same. Although Renovate's default value for pinVersions is `true` - i.e. pin versions of all dependencies, there are cases where you may want to keep ranges, for example if your project is a web library that is consumed by others. In that case, you may wish to keep ranges for `dependencies` but pin versions for `devDependencies`, for example.
When creating the onboarding PR, Renovate will try to detect the best setting for `pinVersions` and apply that in the `renovate.json` file. In most cases it will suggest pinning `devDependencies` and ranges for everything else, however if a repository's `package.json` files are flagged as `private` then Renovate will recommend pinning all dependencies.
Although the PR body can be customised by you, it might be quite challenging. If you think the Pull Request should include different information or could be formatted better, perhaps try raising an [Issue](https://github.com/renovateapp/renovate/issues) and let us solve it for you and for everyone else too.
Renovate defaults to `immediate` but some like to change to `not-pending`. If you set to immediate, it means you will usually get GitHub notifications that a new PR is available but if you view it immediately then it will still have "pending" tests so you can't take any action. With `not-pending`, it means that when you receive the PR notification, you can see if it passed or failed and take action immediately. Therefore you can customise this setting if you wish to be notified a little later in order to reduce "noise".
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.
## rebaseStalePrs
Whether to rebase branches that are no longer up-to-date with the base branch.
This field is defaulted to `false` because it has a potential to create a lot of noise and additional builds to your repository. If you enable it, it means each Renovate branch will be updated whenever the base branch has changed. If enabled, this also means that whenever a Renovate PR is merged (whether by automerge or manually via GitHub web) then any other existing Renovate PRs will then need to get rebased and retested.
## recreateClosed
Recreate PRs even if same ones were closed previously.
By default, Renovate will detect if it has proposed an update to a project before and not propose the same one again. For example the Webpack 3.x case described above. This field lets you customise this behaviour down to a per-package level. For example we override it to `true` in the following cases where branch names and PR titles need to be reused:
This is a future feature that is partially implemented. Currently Renovate's default behaviour is to only automerge if every status check has succeeded. In future, this might be configurable to allow certain status checks to be ignored.
You can still override this to `null` today if your repository doesn't support status checks (i.e. no tests) but you still want to use Renovate anyway.
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.
The `schedule` option allows you to define 1 or more times of week for Renovate updates. Running Renovate around the clock may seem too "noisy" for some projects and therefore `schedule` is a good way to reduce the noise by reducing the timeframe in which Renovate will operate on your repository.
For this we rely on text parsing of the library [later](http://bunkat.github.io/later/parsers.html#text) but only its concepts of "days", "time_before", and "time_after" (Renovate does not support scheduled minutes or "at an exact time" granularity).
Example scheduling:
```
every weekend
before 5:00am
after 10pm and before 5:00am
after 10pm and before 5am every weekday
on friday and saturday
```
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:
```json
"schedule": ["after 10pm and before 5am on every weekday", "every weekend"]
```
This would mean that Renovate can run for 7 hours each night plus all the time on weekends.
This scheduling feature can also be particularly useful for "noisy" packages that are updated frequently, such as `aws-sdk`.
To restrict `aws-sdk` to only weekly updates, you could add this package rule:
```json
"packageRules": [
{
"packageNames": ["aws-sdk"],
"schedule": ["after 9pm on sunday"]
}
]
```
## semanticCommits
Enable semantic commit prefixes for commits and PR titles.
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 set to true, then the `semanticPrefix` field will be used for each commit message and PR title.
However, please note that Renovate will autodetect if your repository is already using semantic commits or not and follow suit, so you only really need to configure this if you wish to _override_ Renovate's autodetected setting.
By default, Renovate uses `angular` semantic commit conventions and `chore(deps)` as the prefix. This is override for `dependencies`, which defaults to `fix(deps)`. You can change this setting by editing this `semanticPrefix` field at any configuration level.
## separateMajorReleases
If set to false, it will upgrade dependencies to latest release only, and not separate major/minor branches.
Renovate's default behaviour is to create a separate branch/PR if updates or multiple major versions exist. 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 setting 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 receive 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 master 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.
By default, Renovate won't distinguish between "patch" (e.g. 1.0.x) and "minor" (e.g. 1.x.0) releases - groups them together. e.g. if you are running version 1.0.0 of a package and both versions 1.0.1 and 1.1.0 are available then Renovate will raise a single PR for version 1.1.0. If you wish to distinguish between patch and minor upgrades, for example if you wish to automerge patch but not minor, then you can set this option to `true`.
It is only recommended to set this field if you wish to use the `schedules` feature and want to write them in your local timezone. Please see the above link for valid timezone names.
It is not known by many that npm package authors and collaborators can _delete_ an npm version if it is less than 24 hours old. e.g. version 1.0.0 might exist, then version 1.1.0 is released, and then version 1.1.0 might get deleted hours later. This means that version 1.1.0 essentially "disappears" and 1.0.0 returns to being the "latest". If you have installed 1.1.0 during that time then your build is essentially broken.
This setting `unpublishSafe` enabled will add a `renovate/unpublish-safe` status check with value pending to every branch to warn you about this possibility. It can be handy when used with the `prCreation` = `not-pending` configuration option - that way you won't get the PR raised until after a patch is 24 hours old or more.
