renovate/docs/usage/self-hosted-configuration.md

title	description
Self-Hosted configuration	Self-Hosted configuration usable in config file, CLI or environment variables

Self-Hosted configuration options

The configuration options listed in this document are applicable to self-hosted instances of Renovate ("the bot").

Please also see Self-Hosted Experimental Options.

allowCustomCrateRegistries

allowPostUpgradeCommandTemplating

Set to true to allow templating of dependency level post-upgrade commands.

Let's look at an example of configuring packages with existing Angular migrations.

Add two properties to config.js: allowPostUpgradeCommandTemplating and allowedPostUpgradeCommands:

module.exports = {
  allowPostUpgradeCommandTemplating: true,
  allowedPostUpgradeCommands: ['^npm ci --ignore-scripts$', '^npx ng update'],
};

In the renovate.json file, define the commands and files to be included in the final commit.

The command to install dependencies (npm ci --ignore-scripts) is necessary because, by default, the installation of dependencies is skipped (see the skipInstalls global option).

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["@angular/core"],
      "postUpgradeTasks": {
        "commands": [
          "npm ci --ignore-scripts",
          "npx ng update {{{depName}}} --from={{{currentVersion}}} --to={{{newVersion}}} --migrate-only --allow-dirty --force"
        ],
        "fileFilters": ["**/**"]
      }
    }
  ]
}

With this configuration, the executable command for @angular/core looks like this:

npm ci --ignore-scripts
npx ng update @angular/core --from=10.0.0 --to=11.0.0 --migrate-only --allow-dirty --force

allowScripts

allowedPostUpgradeCommands

A list of regular expressions that determine which commands in postUpgradeTasks are allowed to be executed. If this list is empty then no tasks will be executed.

e.g.

{
  "allowedPostUpgradeCommands": ["^tslint --fix$", "^tslint --[a-z]+$"]
}

autodiscover

When you enable autodiscover, by default, Renovate will run on every repository that the bot account can access. If you want Renovate to run on only a subset of those, use the autodiscoverFilter option to limit the bot to only the wanted repositories.

autodiscoverFilter

You can use this option to filter the list of repositories that the Renovate bot account can access through autodiscover. It takes a minimatch glob-style pattern.

e.g.

{
  "autodiscoverFilter": "project/*"
}

baseDir

By default Renovate uses a temporary directory like /tmp/renovate to store its data. You can override this default with the baseDir option.

e.g.

{
  "baseDir": "/my-own-different-temporary-folder"
}

binarySource

Renovate often needs to use third party binaries in its PRs, e.g. npm to update package-lock.json or go to update go.sum. By default, Renovate will use a child process to run such tools, so they need to be pre-installed before running Renovate and available in the path.

As an alternative, Renovate can use "sidecar" containers for third party tools. If configured, Renovate will use docker run to create containers such as Node.js or Python to run tools within as-needed. For this to work, docker needs to be installed and the Docker socket available to Renovate.

cacheDir

By default Renovate uses a temporary directory like /tmp/renovate/cache to store cache data. Use the cacheDir option to override this default.

The baseDir and cacheDir option do not need to point to the same directory. You can use one directory for the repo data, and another for the the cache data.

e.g.

{
  "baseDir": "/my-own-different-temporary-folder",
  "cacheDir": "/my-own-different-cache-folder"
}

customEnvVariables

This configuration will be applied after all other environment variables so that it can be used to override defaults.

dockerChildPrefix

Adds a custom prefix to the default Renovate sidecar Docker containers name and label.

If this is set to myprefix_ the final container created from renovate/node image would be named myprefix_node instead of currently used renovate_node and be labeled myprefix_child instead of renovate_child.

Note that dangling containers will not be removed until Renovate is run with the same prefix again.

dockerImagePrefix

By default Renovate pulls the sidecar Docker containers from docker.io/renovate. You can use the dockerImagePrefix option to override this default.

Say you want to pull your images from ghcr.io/renovatebot instead of docker.io/renovate. You would use put this in your configuration file:

{
  "dockerImagePrefix": "ghcr.io/renovatebot"
}

If you pulled a new node image, the final image would be ghcr.io/renovatebot/node instead of docker.io/renovate/node.

dockerUser

Override default user and group used by Docker-based binaries. The user-id (UID) and group-id (GID) should match the user that executes Renovate.

Read the Docker run reference for more information on user and group syntax. Set this to 1001:1002 to use UID 1001 and GID 1002. e.g.

{
  "dockerUser": "1001:1002"
}

dryRun

endpoint

exposeAllEnv

By default, Renovate only passes a limited set of environment variables to package managers. Confidential data can be leaked if a malicious script enumerates all environment variables. Set exposeAllEnv to true only if you have reviewed (and trust) the repositories which Renovate bot runs against.

Setting this to true will also allow for variable substitution in .npmrc files.

force

This object is used as a "force override" when you need to make sure certain configuration overrides whatever is configured in the repository. For example, forcing a null (no) schedule to make sure Renovate raises PRs on a run even if the repository itself or its preset defines a schedule that's currently inactive.

In practice, it is implemented by converting the force configuration into a packageRule that matches all packages.

forceCli

This is set to true by default, meaning that any settings (such as schedule) take maximum priority even against custom settings existing inside individual repositories. It will also override any settings in packageRules.

forkMode

You probably have no need for this option - it is an experimental setting for the Renovate hosted GitHub App. If this is set to true then Renovate will fork the repository into the personal space of the person owning the Personal Access Token.

forkToken

You probably have no need for this option - it is an experimental setting for the Renovate hosted GitHub App. This should be set to a Personal Access Token (GitHub only) when forkMode is set to true. Renovate will use this token to fork the repository into the personal space of the person owning the Personal Access Token. Renovate will then create branches on the fork and opens Pull Requests on the parent repository.

gitAuthor

You can customize the Git author that's used whenever Renovate creates a commit. The gitAuthor option accepts a RFC5322-compliant string.

Note 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.

gitNoVerify

Controls when Renovate passes the --no-verify flag to git. The flag can be passed to git commit and/or git push. Read the documentation for git commit --no-verify and git push --no-verify to learn exactly what each flag does. To learn more about Git hooks, read the Pro Git 2 book, section on Git Hooks.

gitPrivateKey

This should be an armored private key, e.g. the type you get from running gpg --export-secret-keys --armor 92066A17F0D1707B4E96863955FEF5171C45FAE5 > private.key. Replace the newlines with \n before adding the resulting single-line value to your bot's config.

It will be loaded lazily. Before the first commit in a repository, Renovate will:

1. Run gpg import (if it hasn't been run before)
2. Run git config user.signingkey and git config commit.gpgsign true

The git commands are run locally in the cloned repo instead of globally. This reduces the chance of unintended consequences with global Git configs on shared systems.

gitUrl

Override the default resolution for Git remote, e.g. to switch GitLab from HTTPS to SSH-based. Currently works for GitLab only.

Possible values:

• default: use HTTPS URLs provided by the platform for Git
• ssh: use SSH URLs provided by the platform for Git
• endpoint: ignore URLs provided by the platform and use the configured endpoint directly

logContext

logContext is included with each log entry only if logFormat="json" - it is not included in the pretty log output. If left as default (null), a random short ID will be selected.

logFile

logFileLevel

migratePresets

Use this if you have repositories that extend from a particular preset, which has now been renamed or removed. This is handy if you have a large number of repositories that all extend from a particular preset which you want to rename, without the hassle of manually updating every repository individually. Use an empty string to indicate that the preset should be ignored rather than replaced.

Example:

modules.exports = {
  migratePresets: {
    '@company': 'local>org/renovate-config',
  },
};

In the above example any reference to the @company preset will be replaced with local>org/renovate-config.

onboarding

Set this to false only if all three statements are true:

• You've configured Renovate entirely on the bot side (e.g. empty renovate.json in repositories)
• You want to run Renovate on every repository the bot has access to
• You want to skip all onboarding PRs

onboardingBranch

Note that this setting is independent of branchPrefix. For example, if you configure branchPrefix to be renovate- then you'd still have the onboarding PR created with branch renovate/configure until you configure onboardingBranch=renovate-configure or similar. If you have an existing Renovate installation and you change onboardingBranch then it's possible that you'll get onboarding PRs for repositories that had previously closed the onboarding PR unmerged.

onboardingCommitMessage

Note that if commitMessagePrefix or semanticCommits values are defined then they will be prepended to the commit message using the same logic that is used for adding them to non-onboarding commit messages.

onboardingConfig

onboardingConfigFileName

If set to one of the valid config file names, the onboarding PR will create a configuration file with the provided name instead of renovate.json. Falls back to renovate.json if the name provided is not valid.

onboardingPrTitle

Similarly to onboardingBranch, if you have an existing Renovate installation and you change onboardingPrTitle then it's possible that you'll get onboarding PRs for repositories that had previously closed the onboarding PR unmerged.

optimizeForDisabled

password

persistRepoData

Set this to true if you want Renovate to persist repo data between runs. The intention is that this allows Renovate to do a faster git fetch between runs rather than git clone. It also may mean that ignored directories like node_modules can be preserved and save time on operations like npm install.

platform

prCommitsPerRunLimit

Parameter to reduce CI load. CI jobs are usually triggered by these events: pull-request creation, pull-request update, automerge events. Set as an integer. Default is no limit.

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.

privateKey

This private key is used to decrypt config files.

The corresponding public key can be used to create encrypted values for config files. If you want a simple UI to encrypt values you can put the public key in a HTML page similar to https://renovatebot.com/encrypt.

To create the key pair with OpenSSL use the following commands:

• openssl genrsa -out rsa_priv.pem 4096 for generating the private key
• openssl rsa -pubout -in rsa_priv.pem -out rsa_pub.pem for extracting the public key

To encrypt a secret with OpenSSL use the following command:

echo 'actual-secret' | openssl rsautl -encrypt -pubin -inkey rsa_pub.pem | base64

Replace actual-secret with the secret to encrypt.

privateKeyPath

Used as an alternative to privateKey, if you wish for the key to be read from disk instead.

productLinks

Override this object if you wish to change the URLs that Renovate links to, e.g. if you have an internal forum for asking for help.

redisUrl

If this value is set then Renovate will use Redis for its global cache instead of the local file system. The global cache is used to store lookup results (e.g. dependency versions and release notes) between repositories and runs. Example url: redis://localhost.

repositories

repositoryCache

Set this to "enabled" to have Renovate maintain a JSON file cache per-repository to speed up extractions. Set to "reset" if you ever need to bypass the cache and have it overwritten. JSON files will be stored inside the cacheDir beside the existing file-based package cache.

Warning: this is an experimental feature and may be modified or removed in a future non-major release.

requireConfig

If this is set to false, it means that Renovate won't require a config file such as renovate.json to be present in each repository and will run even if one is missing.

secrets

Secrets may be configured by a bot admin in config.js, which will then make them available for templating within repository configs. For example, to configure a GOOGLE_TOKEN to be accessible by all repositories:

module.exports = {
  secrets: {
    GOOGLE_TOKEN: 'abc123',
  },
};

They can also be configured per repository, e.g.

module.exports = {
  repositories: [
    {
      repository: 'abc/def',
      secrets: {
        GOOGLE_TOKEN: 'abc123',
      },
    },
  ],
};

It could then be used in a repository config or preset like so:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "google.com",
      "token": "{{ secrets.GOOGLE_TOKEN }}"
    }
  ]
}

Secret names must start with an upper or lower case character and can contain only characters, digits, or underscores.

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 and lerna/npm only, and only used in cases where bugs in npm result in incorrect lock files being updated.

token

username

Mandatory if a GitHub app token is in use using the CLI.