renovate VS ingress-nginx

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

# Add NGINX ingress using Helm eks.HelmChart( self, "NginxIngress", cluster=cluster, chart="ingress-nginx", repository="https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx", namespace="ingress-nginx", values=helm_values )

ingress-nginx

The second one is a combination of tools: External DNS, cert-manager, and NGINX ingress. Using these as a stack, you can quickly deploy an application, making it available through a DNS with a TLS without much effort via simple annotations. When I first discovered External DNS, I was amazed at its quality.

resource "helm_release" "icrelease" { name = "nginx-ingress" repository = "https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx" chart = "ingress-nginx" version = "4.9.1" namespace = kubernetes_namespace.icnamespace.metadata[0].name set { name = "controller.ingressClassResource.default" value = "true" } }

helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx helm repo update helm upgrade --install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx --namespace ingress-nginx --create-namespace -f custom/ghost/nginx.yaml

For example, if you chose Nginx Ingress, you will use some of its dozens of annotations that are not portable if you decide to switch to another Ingress implementation like Apache APISIX.

The controller is installed with helm upgrade --install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx --repo https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx --namespace ingress-nginx --create-namespace

helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx helm repo add rancher-latest https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/latest helm repo update helm repo list

Everything in the YAML snippets below — except for ingress configuration — relates to configuring the NGINX ingress controller. This includes customizing the default configuration.