Docker¶

Renovate supports upgrading dependencies in various types of Docker definition files:

Docker's Dockerfile files
Docker Compose docker-compose.yml, compose.yml files
Visual Studio Code dev containers and GitHub Codespaces images and features
CircleCI config files
Kubernetes manifest files
Ansible configuration files

How It Works¶

Renovate searches in each repository for any files matching each manager's configured fileMatch pattern(s)
Matching files are parsed, Renovate checks if the file(s) has any Docker image references (e.g. FROM lines in a Dockerfile)
If the image tag in use "looks" like a version (e.g. myimage:1, myimage:1.1, myimage:1.1.0, myimage:1-onbuild) then Renovate checks the Docker registry for upgrades (e.g. from myimage:1.1.0 to myimage:1.2.0)

Preservation of Version Precision¶

By default, Renovate preserves the precision level specified in the Docker images. For example, if the existing image is pinned at myimage:1.1 then Renovate only proposes upgrades to myimage:1.2 or myimage:1.3. This means that you will not get upgrades to a more specific versions like myimage:1.2.0 or myimage:1.3.0. Renovate does not yet support "pinning" an imprecise version to a precise version, e.g. from myimage:1.2 to myimage:1.2.0, but it's a feature we'd like to work on one day.

Version compatibility¶

Although suffixes in SemVer indicate pre-releases (e.g. v1.2.0-alpha.2), in Docker they typically indicate compatibility, e.g. 1.2.0-alpine. By default Renovate assumes suffixes indicate compatibility, for this reason Renovate will not change any suffixes. Renovate will update 1.2.0-alpine to 1.2.1-alpine but never updates to 1.2.1 or 1.2.1-stretch as that would change the suffix.

If this behavior does not suit a particular package you have, Renovate allows you to customize the versioning scheme it uses. For example, you have a Docker image foo/bar that sticks to SemVer versioning. This means that you need to tell Renovate that suffixes indicate pre-release versions, and not compatibility.

You could then use this packageRules array, to tell Renovate to use semver versioning for the foo/bar package:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["foo/bar"],
      "versioning": "semver"
    }
  ]
}

Another example is the official python image, which follows pep440 versioning.

Telling Renovate to use the pep440 versioning scheme

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["python"],
      "versioning": "pep440"
    }
  ]
}

If traditional versioning doesn't work, try Renovate's built-in loose versioning. Renovate will perform a best-effort sort of the versions, regardless of whether they have letters or digits.

If both the traditional versioning, and the loose versioning do not give the results you want, try the regex versioning. This approach uses regex capture group syntax to specify which part of the version string is major, minor, patch, pre-release, or compatibility. See the docs for versioning for documentation and examples of regex versioning in action.

Digest Pinning¶

We recommend that you pin your Docker images to an exact digest. By pinning to a digest you make your Docker builds immutable, every time you do a pull you get the same content.

If you work with dependencies in the JavaScript/npm ecosystem, you may be used to exact versions being immutable. For example, if you set a version like 2.0.1, you and your colleagues always get the exact same "code".

Docker's tags are not immutable versions, even if tags look like a version. You probably expect myimage:1 and myimage:1.2 to change over time, but you might incorrectly assume that myimage:1.2.0 never changes. Although it probably shouldn't, the reality is that any Docker image tag can change content, and potentially break.

By replacing Docker tags with Docker digests as the image's primary identifier you'll get immutable builds. Working with strings like FROM node@sha256:d938c1761e3afbae9242848ffbb95b9cc1cb0a24d889f8bd955204d347a7266e is hard. Luckily Renovate can update the digests for you.

When pinning a digest, Renovate retains the Docker tag in the FROM line for readability, like this: FROM node:14.15.1@sha256:d938c1761e3afbae9242848ffbb95b9cc1cb0a24d889f8bd955204d347a7266e.

Digest Updating¶

If you follow our advice to replace a tag like node:14 with a pinned digest like node:14@sha256:d938c1761e3afbae9242848ffbb95b9cc1cb0a24d889f8bd955204d347a7266e, you will get Renovate PRs whenever the node:14 image is updated on Docker Hub.

Previously this update would have been "invisible" to you - one day you pull code that represents node:14.15.0 and the next day you pull code that represents node:14.15.1. But you can never be sure, especially as Docker caches. Maybe some of your colleagues, or worse still your build machine, are stuck on an older version with a security vulnerability.

By pinning to a digest instead, you will get these updates via Pull Requests, or even committed directly to your repository if you enable branch automerge for convenience. This makes sure everyone on your team uses the latest versions.

Version Upgrading¶

Renovate also supports upgrading versions in Docker tags, so from myimage:1.2.0 to myimage:1.2.1, or from myimage:1.2 to myimage:1.3. If a tag looks like a version, Renovate will upgrade it like a version.

We recommend you use the major.minor.patch tagging scheme, so change myimage:1 to myimage:1.1.1 first. This way you can see the changes in Renovate PRs. You can see the difference between a PR that upgrades myimage from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 and a PR that changes the contents of the version you already use (1.1.1).

By default, Renovate will upgrade minor and patch versions, so from 1.2.0 to 1.2.1, but not upgrade major versions. If you wish to enable major versions: add the preset docker:enableMajor to the extends array in your renovate.json file.

Renovate has some Docker-specific intelligence when it comes to versions. For example:

Ubuntu codenames¶

Renovate understands Ubuntu release code names and will offer upgrades to the latest LTS release.

You must only use the first term of the code name in lowercase. So use noble for the Noble Numbat release.

For example, Renovate will offer to upgrade the following Dockerfile layer:

- FROM ubuntu:jammy
+ FROM ubuntu:noble

Debian codenames¶

Renovate understands Debian release code names and rolling updates schedule and will offer upgrades to the latest stable release. For example from debian:bullseye to debian:bookworm.

The Debian codename must be in lowercase.

For example, Renovate will offer to upgrade the following Dockerfile layer:

- FROM debian:bullseye
+ FROM debian:bookworm

Configuring/Disabling¶

If you wish to make changes that apply to all Docker managers, then add them to the docker config object. This is not foolproof, because some managers like circleci and ansible support multiple datasources that do not inherit from the docker config object.

If you wish to override Docker settings for one particular type of manager, use that manager's config object instead. For example, to disable digest updates for Docker Compose only but leave them for other managers like Dockerfile, you would use this:

{
  "docker-compose": {
    "digest": {
      "enabled": false
    }
  }
}

The following configuration options are applicable to Docker:

Disable all Docker Renovation¶

Add "docker:disable" to your extends array.

Disable Renovate for only certain Dockerfiles¶

Add all paths to ignore into the ignorePaths configuration field. e.g.

{
  "extends": ["config:recommended"],
  "ignorePaths": ["docker/old-files/"]
}

Enable Docker major updates¶

Add "docker:enableMajor" to your extends array.

Disable digest pinning¶

Add "default:pinDigestsDisabled" to your extends array.

Automerge digest updates¶

Add "default:automergeDigest" to your extends array. If you want Renovate to commit directly to your base branch without opening a PR first, add "default:automergeBranchPush" to the extends array.

Registry authentication¶

There are many different registries, and many ways to authenticate to those registries. We will explain how to authenticate for the most common registries.

DockerHub¶

Here is an example of configuring a default Docker username/password in config.js. The Docker Hub password is stored in a process environment variable.

config.js

module.exports = {
  hostRules: [
    {
      hostType: 'docker',
      username: '<your-username>',
      password: process.env.DOCKER_HUB_PASSWORD,
    },
  ],
};

You can add more host rules, read the hostRules documentation for more information.

Self-hosted Docker registry¶

Say you host some Docker images yourself, and use a password to access your self-hosted Docker images. In addition to self-hosting, you also pull images from Docker Hub, without a password. In this example you would configure a specific Docker host like this:

module.exports = {
  hostRules: [
    {
      hostType: 'docker',
      matchHost: 'your.host.io',
      username: '<your-username>',
      password: process.env.SELF_HOSTED_DOCKER_IMAGES_PASSWORD,
    },
  ],
};

AWS ECR (Amazon Web Services Elastic Container Registry)¶

Using access key id & secret¶

Renovate can authenticate with AWS ECR using AWS access key id & secret as the username & password, for example:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "hostType": "docker",
      "matchHost": "12345612312.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com",
      "username": "AKIAABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ",
      "encrypted": {
        "password": "w...A"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Using `get-login-password`¶

Renovate can also authenticate with AWS ECR using the output from the aws ecr get-login-password command as outlined in the AWS documentation. To make use of this authentication mechanism, specify the username as AWS:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "hostType": "docker",
      "matchHost": "12345612312.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com",
      "username": "AWS",
      "encrypted": {
        "password": "w...A"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Google Container Registry / Google Artifact Registry¶

Using Workload Identity¶

To let Renovate authenticate with Workload Identity, you must:

Configure Workload Identity
Give the Service Account the artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts permission

With Application Default Credentials (self-hosted only)¶

To let Renovate authenticate with ADC, you must:

Configure ADC as normal
Not provide a username, password or token

Renovate will get the credentials with the google-auth-library.

With short-lived access token / GitHub Actions (self-hosted only)¶

Example for Workload Identity plus Renovate host rules

- name: authenticate to google cloud
  id: auth
  uses: google-github-actions/auth@v2.1.7
  with:
    token_format: 'access_token'
    workload_identity_provider: ${{ env.WORKLOAD_IDENTITY_PROVIDER }}
    service_account: ${{ env.SERVICE_ACCOUNT }}

- name: renovate
  uses: renovatebot/github-action@v41.0.6
  env:
    RENOVATE_HOST_RULES: |
      [
        {
          matchHost: "us-central1-docker.pkg.dev",
          hostType: "docker",
          username: "oauth2accesstoken",
          password: "${{ steps.auth.outputs.access_token }}"
        }
      ]
  with:
    token: ${{ secrets.RENOVATE_TOKEN }}
    configurationFile: .github/renovate.json5

You can find a full GitHub Workflow example on the renovatebot/github-action repository.

Using long-lived service account credentials¶

To access the Google Container Registry (deprecated) or the Google Artifact Registry, use the JSON service account with Basic authentication, and use the:

_json_key as username
full Google Cloud Platform service account JSON as password

To avoid JSON-in-JSON wrapping, which can cause problems, encode the JSON service account beforehand.

Google Container Registry does not natively support _json_key_base64 and a base64 encoded service account. Google Artifact Registry supports _json_key_base64 and a base64 encoded service account natively. If all your dependencies are on the Google Artifact Registry, you can base64 encode and use the service account directly:

Download your JSON service account and store it on your machine. Make sure that the service account has read (and only read) permissions to your artifacts
Base64 encode the service account credentials by running cat service-account.json | base64
Add the encoded service account to your configuration file

If you want to add it to your self-hosted configuration file:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "europe-docker.pkg.dev",
      "username": "_json_key_base64",
      "password": "<base64 service account>"
    }
  ]
}

If you want to add it to your repository Renovate configuration file, encrypt it and then add it:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "europe-docker.pkg.dev",
      "username": "_json_key_base64",
      "encrypted": {
        "password": "<encrypted base64 service account>"
      }
    }
  ]
}

If you have dependencies on Google Container Registry (and Artifact Registry) you need to use _json_key and a slightly different encoding:

Download your JSON service account and store it on your machine. Make sure that the service account has read (and only read) permissions to your artifacts
Open the file and prefix the content with _json_key:. The file should look like this:

_json_key:{
  "type": "service_account",
  "project_id": "sample-project",
  "private_key_id": "5786ff7e615522b932a2a37b4a6f9645c4316dbd",
  "private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIEvgIBADANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAASCBKgwggSkAgEAAoIBAQDaOkxZut9uDUHV\n...\n/PWs0Wa2z5+IawMD7nO63+b6\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
  "client_email": "renovate-lookup@sample-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
  "client_id": "115429165445403928973",
  "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
  "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
  "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
  "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/robot/v1/metadata/x509/renovate-lookup%40sample-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
}

Base64 encode the prefixed service account credentials by running cat prefixed-service-account.json | base64
Add the prefixed and encoded service account to your configuration file

If you want to add it to your self-hosted configuration file:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "europe-docker.pkg.dev",
      "authType": "Basic",
      "token": "<base64 prefixed service account>"
    }
  ]
}

If you want to add it to your repository Renovate configuration file, encrypt it and then add it:

{
  "hostRules": [
    {
      "matchHost": "europe-docker.pkg.dev",
      "authType": "Basic",
      "encrypted": {
        "token": "<encrypted base64 prefixed service account>"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Using short-lived access token / Gitlab CI / Google Cloud¶

For this example, assume that you want to:

Run the GitLab CI in the Google Cloud
Store your Docker images in the Google Container Registry (GCR)

Accessing the Google Container Registry¶

Accessing the GCR uses Bearer token based authentication.

First, install the Google Cloud SDK. Then get the token by running: gcloud auth print-access-token.

Short-lived GCR Bearer tokens¶

The GCR Bearer token expires after 60 minutes. This means you can not re-use the token in a later build.

Instead, before Renovate starts in the GCR context, you must:

Fetch the Google access token
Inject the token into the hostRules configuration

The following text explains one way to fetch the token, and inject it into Renovate.

Basic approach¶

The basic approach is:

Create a custom image: fetch the GCR token, and inject the token into Renovate's config.js file
Then run Renovate as one of the stages of your project

Independent runs¶

To make the run independent of any user, use a Project Access Token. Give the Project Access Token these scopes:

api
read_api
write_repository

Then use the Project Access Token as the RENOVATE_TOKEN variable for GitLab CI. For more (gitlab-ci.yml) configuration examples, see the renovate-runner repository on GitLab.

Create a custom image¶

To access the token, you need a custom Renovate Docker image. Make sure to install the Google Cloud SDK into the custom image, as you need the gcloud auth print-access-token command later.

For example:

FROM renovate/renovate:39.69.2
# Include the "Docker tip" which you can find here https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install
# under "Installation" for "Debian/Ubuntu"
RUN ...

Accessing the Google Container Registry (GCR)¶

Renovate needs the current Google Access Token to access the Google Container Registry (GCR). Here's an example of how to set that up:

hostRules: [
  {
    matchHost: 'eu.gcr.io',
    token: 'MyReallySecretTokenThatExpiresAfter60Minutes',
  },
];

One way to give Renovate the short-lived Google Access Token is to:

Write a script that generates a config.js file, with the token, in your gitlab-ci.yml file
Run the config.js creation scrip just before you start Renovate