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. 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 renovating a repository, Renovate tries to detect the configuration files in the order listed above, and stops after the first one is found.

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": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["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

additionalBranchPrefix

This value defaults to an empty string, and is typically not necessary. Some managers previously populated this field, but they no longer do so by default. You normally don't need to configure this, but one example where it can be useful is combining with parentDir in monorepos to split PRs based on where the package definition is located, e.g.

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

additionalReviewers

In contrast to reviewers, this option adds to the existing reviewer list, rather than replacing it. This makes it suitable for augmenting a preset or base list without displacing 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.

See GitHub or GitLab documentation for details on syntax and possible file locations.

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.

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
    }
  ]
}

Important: Renovate won't automerge on GitHub if a PR has a negative review outstanding.

!!! 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.

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.

automergeStrategy

This setting is only applicable if you opt-in by configuring automerge to true and automergeType to pr for any of your dependencies.

The automerge strategy defaults to auto, in which Renovate will make its best guess as to how to merge pull requests. This generally results in Renovate respecting the strategy configured in the platform itself for the repository if possible. Acceptable values are:

• auto, in which the choice is left to Renovate
• fast-forward, which generally involves no new commits in the resultant tree, but "fast-forwarding" the main branch reference
• merge-commit, which generally involves synthesizing a new merge commit
• rebase, which generally involves rewriting history as part of the merge — but usually retaining the individual commits
• squash, which generally involves flattening the commits that are being merged into a single new commit

Not all platforms support all pull request merge strategies. In cases where a merge strategy is not supported by the platform, Renovate will hold off on merging instead of silently merging in a way you didn't wish for.

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.

azureAutoApprove

Setting this to true will automatically approve the PRs in Azure DevOps.

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

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"]

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.

!!! note The baseBranches config option is not supported when forkMode is enabled, including in the Forking Renovate app.

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:base 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 just set a value for prConcurrentLimit and it will be reused 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

!!! warning We strongly recommended that you do not configure this field directly. Use at your own risk.

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 and we should have a feature request from you to add it to the project

branchNameStrict

By default, Renovate doesn't care about special characters when slugifying the branch name. This means that special characters like . may end up in the branch name.

When you set branchNameStrict to true:

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

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 advance field and it's recommend you seek a config review before applying it.

bumpVersion

Currently this setting supports helmv3, npm, maven and sbt only, so raise a feature request if you have a use for it with other package managers. Its purpose is if you want Renovate to update the version field within your package file any time it updates dependencies within. Usually this is for automatic release purposes, so that you don't need to add another step after Renovate before you can 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.

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 just 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 signoff to each commit.

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

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

commitBodyTable

commitMessage

!!! warning Editing of commitMessage directly is now deprecated and not recommended. Please instead edit the fields such as commitMessageAction, commitMessageExtra, etc.

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".

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

This is used to alter commitMessage and prTitle without needing to copy/paste the whole string. The "topic" is usually refers to the dependency being updated, e.g. "dependency react".

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 behaviour, 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 behaviour.

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 will raise a pull request if config file migration is needed.

We're adding new features to Renovate bot often. Most times you can keep using your Renovate config and benefit from the new features right away. But sometimes you need to change your Renovate configuration. To help you with this, Renovate will create config migration pull requests.

Example:

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

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

!!! info This feature writes plain JSON for .json files, and JSON5 for .json5 files. JSON5 content can potentially be down leveled (.json files) and all comments will be removed.

!!! note Closing the config migration PR will cause it to be ignored and not being reopend/recreated in the future.',

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. Manually specifying constraints is supported for ruby, bundler, composer, go, npm, yarn, pnpm, python, pipenv, and poetry.

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.

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:base preset.

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

{
  "extends": ["config:base", ":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 Just enabling the Dependency Dashboard doesn't 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 ticking 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": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["^@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.

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. Descriptions fields embedded within presets are also collated as part of the onboarding description.

digest

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

docker

Add config here if you wish it to apply to Docker package managers Dockerfile and Docker Compose. If instead you mean to apply settings to any package manager that updates using the Docker datasource, use a package rule instead, e.g.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "labels": ["docker-update"]
    }
  ]
}

dotnet

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 GitLab and Gitea implement draft status by checking if the PR's title starts with certain strings. This means that draftPR on GitLab and Gitea 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": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["^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"]
}

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

encrypted

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

!!! 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.

excludeCommitPaths

!!! warning For advanced users only!

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.

extends

See shareable config presets for details.

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>.*)$"
    }
  ]
}

fetchReleaseNotes

Set this to false if you want to disable release notes fetching.

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

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

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

fileMatch

fileMatch is used by Renovate to know which files in a repository to parse and extract, and it is possible to override the default values to customize for your project's needs.

Sometimes file matches are really simple - for example with Go Modules Renovate looks for any go.mod file, and you probably don't need to change that default.

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 ['(^|/|\\.)Dockerfile$', '(^|/)Dockerfile[^/]*$']. 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 just 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

!!! warning Advanced functionality. Only use this if you're sure you know what you're doing.

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

The main usecase 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.

gitAuthor

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

!!! 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.

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, automergeType=pr or automergeType=branch and platformAutomerge=true. Also, approval rules overriding should not be prevented in GitLab settings.

golang

Configuration added here applies for all Go-related updates. The only supported package manager for Go is the native Go Modules (the gomod manager).

For self-hosted users, GOPROXY, GONOPROXY, GOPRIVATE and GOINSECURE environment variables are supported (reference).

Usage of direct will fallback to the Renovate-native release fetching mechanism. Also we support the off keyword which will stop any fetching immediately.

group

!!! warning Advanced functionality only. Do not use unless you know what you're doing.

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)"]
}

!!! 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);

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": "github.com",
      "concurrentRequestLimit": 2
    }
  ]
}

enableHttp2

Enable got http2 support.

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.

insecureRegistry

!!! warning Advanced config, use at your own risk.

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
    }
  ]
}

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.

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 just 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, but this is not recommended 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:base 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 hosted app to self-hosted. 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. It's recommended to revert this setting once that transition period is over and all old PRs are resolved.

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:base"],
  "ignorePresets": [":prHourlyLimit2"]
}

It would take the entire "config:base" preset - which has a lot of sub-presets - but ignore the ":prHourlyLimit2" rule.

ignoreScripts

Applicable for npm and Composer 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.

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

includeForks

By default, Renovate will skip over any repositories that are forked. This includes if the forked repository has a Renovate config file, because Renovate can't tell if that file was added by the original repository or not. If you wish to enable processing of a forked repository by Renovate, you need to add "includeForks": true to your repository config or run the CLI command with --include-forks=true.

If you are using the hosted Mend Renovate then this option will be configured to true automatically if you "Selected" repositories individually but remain as false if you installed for "All" repositories.

includePaths

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

Alternatively, if you need to just 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.

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 stabilityDays 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, where e.g. a pending PR with version 1.0.3 is first released but then downgraded to 1.0.2 once it passes stabilityDays. We recommend that you use the strict mode, and enable the dependencyDashboard so that you have visibility into suppressed PRs.

java

Use this configuration option for shared config across all Java projects (Gradle and Maven).

js

Use this configuration option for shared config across npm/Yarn/pnpm and meteor package managers.

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": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["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.

Renovate only adds labels when it creates the PR, which means:

• If you remove labels which Renovate added, it won't re-apply them
• If you change your config, the new/changed labels are not applied to any open PRs

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.

lockFileMaintenance

This feature can be used to refresh lock files and keep them up-to-date. "Maintaining" a lock file means recreating it so that every dependency version within it is updated to the latest. Supported lock files are:

• package-lock.json
• yarn.lock
• composer.lock
• Gemfile.lock
• poetry.lock
• Cargo.lock
• jsonnetfile.lock.json

Others may be added via feature request.

This feature is disabled by default. If you wish to enable this feature then you could add this to your configuration:

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

To reduce "noise" in the repository, it defaults its schedule to "before 5am 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.

major

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

minor

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

node

Using this configuration option allows you to apply common configuration and policies across all Node.js version updates even if managed by different package managers (npm, yarn, etc.).

Check out our Node.js documentation for a comprehensive explanation of how the node option can be used.

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.

packageRules

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

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

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["^eslint"],
      "groupName": "eslint packages"
    }
  ]
}

Note how the above uses matchPackagePatterns with a regex value.

Here is an example where you might want to limit the "noisy" package aws-sdk to updates just once per week:

{
  "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 matchPackageNames instead of matchPackagePatterns because it is an exact match package name. This is the equivalent of defining "matchPackagePatterns": ["^aws\-sdk$"] and hence much simpler. However you can mix together both matchPackageNames and matchPackagePatterns in the same package rule and the rule will be applied if either match. Example:

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

The above rule will group together the neutrino package and any package matching @neutrino/*.

Path rules are convenient to use if you wish to apply configuration rules to certain package 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": [
    {
      "matchPaths": ["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 matchPaths with either a partial string match or a minimatch pattern. For example you have multiple package.json and want to use dependencyDashboardApproval only on the root package.json:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPaths": ["+(package.json)"],
      "dependencyDashboardApproval": true
    }
  ]
}

Important to know: Renovate will evaluate all packageRules and not stop once it gets a first match. You should order your packageRules in order of importance so that later rules can 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

Use this - usually within a packageRule - to limit how far to upgrade a dependency. For example, if you wish to upgrade to Angular v1.5 but not to angular v1.6 or higher, you could define this to be <= 1.5 or < 1.6.0:

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

The valid syntax for this will be calculated at runtime because it depends on the versioning scheme, which is itself dynamic.

This field also supports Regular Expressions if they begin and end with /. For example, the following will enforce that only 3 or 4-part versions are supported, without any prefixes:

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

This field also supports a special negated regex syntax for ignoring certain versions. Use the syntax !/ / like the following:

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

matchDepTypes

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

excludePackageNames

Important: Do not mix this up with the option ignoreDeps. Use ignoreDeps instead if all you want to do is have a list of package names for Renovate to ignore.

Use excludePackageNames if you want to have one or more exact name matches excluded in your package rule. See also matchPackageNames.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["^eslint"],
      "excludePackageNames": ["eslint-foo"]
    }
  ]
}

The above will match all package names starting with eslint but exclude the specific package eslint-foo.

excludePackagePatterns

Use this field if you want to have one or more package name patterns excluded in your package rule. See also matchPackagePatterns.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["^eslint"],
      "excludePackagePatterns": ["^eslint-foo"]
    }
  ]
}

The above will match all package names starting with eslint but exclude ones starting with eslint-foo.

excludePackagePrefixes

Use this field if you want to have one or more package name prefixes excluded in your package rule, without needing to write a regex. See also matchPackagePrefixes.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackagePrefixes": ["eslint"],
      "excludePackagePrefixes": ["eslint-foo"]
    }
  ]
}

The above will match all package names starting with eslint but exclude ones starting with eslint-foo.

matchLanguages

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

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["request"],
      "matchLanguages": ["python"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

matchBaseBranches

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

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchBaseBranches": ["main"],
      "excludePackagePatterns": ["^eslint"],
      "enabled": false
    }
  ]
}

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

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

matchManagers

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

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

matchDatasources

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

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

matchCurrentVersion

matchCurrentVersion can be an exact SemVer version or a SemVer range:

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

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

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

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

matchFiles

Renovate will compare matchFiles for an exact match against the dependency's package file or lock file.

For example the following would match package.json but not package/frontend/package.json:

  "matchFiles": ["package.json"],

Use matchPaths instead if you need more flexible matching.

matchPackageNames

Use this field if you want to have one or more exact name matches in your package rule. See also excludePackageNames.

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

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

matchPackagePatterns

Use this field if you want to have one or more package names patterns in your package rule. See also excludePackagePatterns.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackagePatterns": ["^angular"],
      "rangeStrategy": "replace"
    }
  ]
}

The above will configure rangeStrategy to replace for any package starting with angular.

matchPackagePrefixes

Use this field to match a package prefix without needing to write a regex expression. See also excludePackagePrefixes.

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackagePrefixes": ["angular"],
      "rangeStrategy": "replace"
    }
  ]
}

Just like the earlier matchPackagePatterns example, the above will configure rangeStrategy to replace for any package starting with angular.

matchPaths

Renovate will match matchPaths against both a partial string match or a minimatch glob pattern. If you want to avoid the partial string matching so that only glob matching is performed, wrap your string in +(...) like so:

  "matchPaths": ["+(package.json)"],

The above will match only the root package.json, whereas the following would match any package.json in any subdirectory too:

  "matchPaths": ["package.json"],

matchSourceUrlPrefixes

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

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

Here's an example of where you use this to group together all packages from the renovatebot GitHub org:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchSourceUrlPrefixes": ["https://github.com/renovatebot/"],
      "groupName": "All renovate packages"
    }
  ]
}

matchSourceUrls

Here's an example of where you use this to match exact package urls:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchSourceUrls": ["https://github.com/facebook/react"],
      "groupName": "React"
    }
  ]
}

matchUpdateTypes

Use this field to match rules against types of updates. For example to apply a special label for Major updates:

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

customChangelogUrl

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

Using this field we can specify the exact url to fetch release notes from.

Example setting source URL for package "dummy":

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

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

replacementName

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

Use this field to define the name of a replacement package. Must be used with replacementVersion (see example below). You can suggest a new community package rule by editing the replacements.ts file on the Renovate repository and opening a pull request.

replacementVersion

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

Use this field to define 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"
    }
  ]
}

patch

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

php

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 by means of their SHA256 digest and not only by tag so that they are immutable.

platformAutomerge

!!! warning Before you enable platformAutomerge 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 you can also set platformAutomerge to true to speed up merging via the platform's native automerge functionality.

Renovate tries platform-native automerge only when it initially creates the PR. Any PR that is being updated will be automerged with the Renovate-based automerge.

platformAutomerge will configure PRs to be merged after all (if any) branch policies have been met. This option is available for Azure, 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 you enable platformAutomerge 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.

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.

postUpdateOptions

• 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.
• gomodUpdateImportPaths: Update source import paths on major module updates, using mod
• npmDedupe: Run npm dedupe after package-lock.json 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 additional 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 if allowPostUpgradeCommandTemplating is enabled.

fileFilters

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

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.

prBodyColumns

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

For example, if you wish to add the package file name to the table, you would add this to your config:

{
  "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 (a) modify the template for an existing table column in PR bodies, or (b) you wish to add a definition for a new/additional column.

Here is an example of modifying the default value for the "Package" column to put it inside a <code></code> block:

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

Here is an example of adding a custom "Sourcegraph" column definition:

{
  "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.

e.g. if you wish to add an extra Warning to major updates:

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

prBodyTemplate

This setting controls which sections are rendered in the body of the pull request.

The available sections are header, table, 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 you would like it to raise PRs:

• immediate (default): Renovate will create PRs immediately after creating the corresponding branch
• not-pending: Renovate will wait until status checks have completed (passed or failed) before raising the PR
• status-success: Renovate won't raise PRs unless tests pass

Renovate defaults to immediate but you might want to change this to not-pending instead.

With prCreation set to immediate, you'll get a Pull Request and possible associated notification right away when a new update is available. Your test suite takes a bit of time to complete, so if you go look at the new PR right away, you don't know if your tests pass or fail. You're basically waiting until you have the test results, before you can decide if you want to merge the PR or not.

With prCreation set to not-pending, Renovate waits until all tests have finished running, and only then creates the PR. When you get the PR notification, you can take action immediately, as you have the full test results.

When you set prCreation to not-pending you're reducing the "noise" but get notified of new PRs a bit later.

prFooter

prHeader

prHourlyLimit

This setting - if enabled - helps slow down Renovate, particularly during the onboarding phase. What may happen without this setting is:

1. Onboarding PR is created
2. User merges onboarding PR to activate Renovate
3. Renovate creates a "Pin Dependencies" PR (if necessary)
4. User merges Pin PR
5. Renovate then creates every single upgrade PR necessary - potentially dozens

The above can result in swamping CI systems, as well as a lot of retesting if branches need to be rebased every time one is merged. Instead, if prHourlyLimit is configure to a value like 1 or 2, it will mean that Renovate creates at most that many new PRs within each hourly period (:00-:59). So the project should still result in all PRs created perhaps within the first 24 hours maximum, but at a rate that may allow users to merge them once they pass tests. It does not place a limit on the number of concurrently open PRs - only on the rate they are created.

This limit 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 stabilityDays is non-zero then Renovate disables the prNotPendingHours functionality.

prPriority

Sometimes Renovate needs to rate limit its creation of PRs, e.g. hourly or concurrent PR limits. In such cases it sorts/prioritizes by default based on the update type (e.g. patches raised before minor, minor before 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
    }
  ]
}

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.

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

Configure to false to disable deleting orphan branches and autoclosing PRs. Defaults to true.

python

Currently the only Python package manager is pip - specifically for requirements.txt and requirements.pip files - so adding any config to this python object is essentially the same as adding it to the pip_requirements object instead.

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, composer, npm, yarn, 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. Always pin devDependencies
2. Pin dependencies if we detect that it's an app and not a library
3. Widen peerDependencies
4. If an existing range already ends with an "or" operator - e.g. "^1.0.0 || ^2.0.0" - then Renovate will widen it, e.g. making it into "^1.0.0 || ^2.0.0 || ^3.0.0"
5. Otherwise, replace the range. e.g. "^2.0.0" would be replaced by "^3.0.0"

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 simple 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
• 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.

recreateClosed

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 behavior 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:

• Package groups
• When pinning versions
• Lock file maintenance

Typically you shouldn't need to modify this setting.

regexManagers

Use regexManagers entries to configure the regex manager in Renovate.

You can define custom managers for cases such as:

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

The custom manager concept is based on using Regular Expression named capture groups.

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

• datasource
• depName
• 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, see our documentation for the regex manager. For template fields, use the triple brace {{{ }}} notation to avoid Handlebars escaping any special characters.

matchStrings

matchStrings should each 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 3 lines in the Dockerfile. renovate.json:

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

a Dockerfile:

FROM amd64/ubuntu:18.04
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 used as basis be used as 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 regex 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 regex manager will upgrade both definitions as its first matchStrings matches both test keys.

renovate.json:

{
  "regexManagers": [
    {
      "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"
    }
  ]
}

example.json:

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

combination

This option allows the possibility to combine the values of multiple lines inside a file. While using multiple lines is also possible using both other matchStringStrategy values, the combination approach is less susceptible to white space or line breaks stopping a match.

combination will only match at most one dependency per file, so if you want to update multiple dependencies using combination you have to define multiple regex managers.

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

renovate.json:

{
  "regexManagers": [
    {
      "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"
    }
  ]
}

Ansible variable file ( yaml ):

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 regex manager will match a single dependency each.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

helm-values.yaml:

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

regex definition:

{
  "regexManagers": [
    {
      "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

registryAliases

You can use the registryAliases object to set registry aliases.

This feature works with the following managers:

• helm-requirements
• helmv3
• helmfile
• gitlabci
• dockerfile
• docker-compose
• kubernetes
• ansible
• droneci

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.

If on GitHub and assigning a team to review, 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"]
}

reviewersFromCodeOwners

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

See GitHub or GitLab documentation for details on syntax and possible file locations.

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, with one exception: npm packages get a rollback PR if needed.

You can configure the rollbackPrs property globally, per-language, or per-package to override the default behavior.

ruby

rust

schedule

The schedule option allows you to define times of week or month for Renovate updates. Running Renovate around the clock can be too "noisy" for some projects. To reduce the noise you can use the schedule config option to limit the time frame in which Renovate will perform actions on your repository. You can use the standard Cron syntax and Later syntax to define your schedule.

The default value for schedule is "at any time", which is functionally the same as declaring a null schedule. i.e. Renovate will run on the repository around the clock.

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 others would benefit from it too.

Otherwise, here are some text schedules that are known to work:

every weekend
before 5:00am
after 10pm and before 5:00am
after 10pm and before 5am every weekday
on friday and saturday
every 3 months on the first day of the month
* 0 2 * *

!!! warning 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": ["after 10pm and before 5am 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 monthly updates, you could add this package rule:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["aws-sdk"],
      "extends": ["schedule:monthly"]
    }
  ]
}

Technical details: We mostly rely on the text parsing of the library @breejs/later but only its concepts of "days", "time_before", and "time_after". Read the parser documentation at breejs.github.io/later/parsers.html#text. To parse Cron syntax, Renovate uses @cheap-glitch/mi-cron. Renovate does not support scheduled minutes or "at an exact time" granularity.

!!! note Actions triggered via the Dependency Dashboard are not restricted by a configured schedule.

!!! tip To validate your later schedule before updating your renovate.json, you can use this CodePen.

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 won't distinguish between "patch" (e.g. 1.0.x) and "minor" (e.g. 1.x.0) releases - it 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 configured this option to true.

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.

stabilityDays

If this is set to a non-zero value, and an update has a release timestamp header, then Renovate will check if the "stability days" have passed.

Note: Renovate will wait for the set number of stabilityDays to pass for each separate version. Renovate does not wait until the package has seen no releases for x stabilityDays. stabilityDays is not intended to help with slowing down fast releasing project updates. If you want to slow down PRs for a specific package, setup a custom schedule for that package. Read our selective-scheduling help to learn how to set the schedule.

If the number of days since the release is less than the set stabilityDays a "pending" status check is added to the branch. If enough days have passed then the "pending" status is removed, and a "passing" status check is added.

Some datasources do not provide a release timestamp (in which case this feature is not compatible), and other datasources may provide a release timestamp but it's not supported by Renovate (in which case a feature request needs to be implemented).

Maven users: you cannot use stabilityDays if a Maven source returns unreliable last-modified headers.

There are a couple of uses for stabilityDays:

Suppress branch/PR creation for X days

If you combine stabilityDays=3 and internalChecksFilter="strict" then Renovate will hold back from creating branches until 3 or more days have elapsed since the version was released. It's recommended that you enable dependencyDashboard=true so you don't lose visibility of these pending PRs.

Prevent holding broken npm packages

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

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["npm"],
      "stabilityDays": 3
    }
  ]
}

Await X days before Automerging

If you have both automerge as well as stabilityDays enabled, it means that PRs will be created immediately but automerging will be delayed until X days have passed. This works because Renovate will add a "renovate/stability-days" pending status check to each branch/PR and that pending check will prevent the branch going green to automerge.

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. Example:

{
  "suppressNotifications": ["prIgnoreNotification"]
}

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

timezone

It is only recommended to configure 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.

transitiveRemediation

When enabled, Renovate tries to remediate vulnerabilities even if they exist only in transitive dependencies.

Applicable only for GitHub platform (with vulnerability alerts enabled) and npm manager. When the lockfileVersion is higher than 1 in package-lock.json, remediations are only possible when changes are made to package.json.

This is considered a feature flag with the aim to remove it and default to this behavior once it has been more widely tested.

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.

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."
  }
}

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 but otherwise just 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. Click on the "Settings" tab
3. Click on "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 "Vulnerability alerts". If you're the account administrator, browse to the app (for example https://github.com/apps/renovate), select "Configure", and then scroll down to the "Permissions" section and make sure that read access to "vulnerability 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. For example, to set custom labels and assignees:

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

!!! warning There's a small chance that an incorrect vulnerability alert could result in flapping/looping vulnerability fixes, so observe carefully if enabling automerge.

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

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