renovate VS renovate

Navigate to the Mend Renovate App on the GitHub Marketplace: https://github.com/apps/renovate.

You commit your docker-compose.yml file(s) to a GitHub repo (don't commit secrets!!), then add the Renovate App to your repo, merge the onboarding PR, then you'll get PRs when an image is updated.

I can't figure out and my google-fu is failing but what is the difference between using the Renovate App [https://github.com/apps/renovate] and using the Action [https://github.com/renovatebot/github-action]

renovate[bot] posted on May 05, 2023

I want to gather some statistics to see for example how many repositories have installed Renovate: https://github.com/apps/renovate

Use a dependency updater like dependabot or https://github.com/apps/renovate.

On the GitHub Marketplace, search for the Renovate app and click install. Select the organization or account where you wish to install Renovate. Next, choose whether to install Renovate across all of your repositories or just one particular one. We will only select one repository in this article.

It's a breeze to set up Renovate on your repositories. Just browse the GitHub Renovate app and click on the big gree Install button in the top right corner. Choose which organization and which repositories you'll install Renovate in.

Firstly, you'd want to integrate Renovate with your GitHub account from here. Then click install, and follow the steps as instructed. While configuring, Renovate lets you decide, if it should run on all the repositories by default or to run on only on specified repositories, select the option as you wish (Note: If you'd want, Renovate to run on forked repositories, Selecting All repositories would skip forked repos by default, in such cases, you'd want to manually add the forked repo(s)). Soon after setting up Renovate with the required repositories, an onboarding PR is submitted by the Renovate bot which contains information like configuration summary and what packages/dependencies are supposed to be upgraded. For demonstration purposes, I've forked a repo from my GitHub account that is supposedly a mobile application built on React Native, which is no longer maintained, so it'd serve as a good example to test on. If you follow the above steps correctly, you should see an onboarding PR similar to this:

Setting up Renovate is a matter of installing the hosted app, and configuring it by adding a renovate.json in the root of the repository. You can also install and run the Renovate CLI tool to get feedback on all your commits.

This month, I gave a talk with my Zenika colleague Lise at the DevoxxFR conference about Renovate and Dependabot, two great tools to help you automatize and upgrade your dependencies.

There is no built-in Renovate Bot on a self-hosted GitLab. What can we do to set it up and enjoy all the benefits of automatic dependency updates?

> Yes, it is awesome until you have to sysadmin it, apply updates, patch it, fix security holes, etc. I am not saying all self-hosted solutions are like that. There are exceptions. However, the majority of open-source self-hosted solutions require a lot of extra work.

I'm currently self-hosting 10 different applications on my local server, which represents everything I've ever seen that looked fun or useful to me. Every one of them had a Docker image with an example compose file, which means updating them just requires periodically running Renovate [0] on the repo that stores all my compose files and then running a script that docker compose pulls the updates. It takes maybe 10 minutes every other week, and is actually kinda fun.

It helps that all the apps are only accessible from within my VPN, so I'm not too worried about fixing security updates within a tiny time window.

[0] https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate

This is a big deal! Where did you read this? I found:

https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/discussions/26917

Renovate is an automated dependency management tool that can be used to keep your dependencies up-to-date. It can be configured to automatically create pull requests to update your dependencies, and it supports a wide range of package managers and platforms.

To get started with Mend Renovate, the comprehensive official documentation provides detailed instructions on installation, configuration, and best practices. Additionally, the Mend Renovate community forum offers a platform for users to connect, share experiences, and access the collective knowledge base.

It is a good practice to keep software up to date. To track changes in upstream software, we can utilize automatic dependency tracking systems such as Dependabot or Renovate. This is a broad topic and requires a separate article to be covered. If you would like to read about it, please vote in the comments section below.

So do other forges: I have Renovate [0] set up on my self-hosted Forgejo and it's worked great so far.

[0] https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate

You can ease some of the burden for yourself though using tooling. If you are using GitHub, dependabot can be configured to make automatic PRs to your repo whenever there are dependencies to update. If you're not a GitHub user, you can use renovate which even supports self hosting.