GitHub and GitHub Enterprise Server¶

Most of the information on this page is meant for users who want to self-host Renovate on GitHub or GitHub Enterprise Server.

Easiest way to run Renovate¶

For users on GitHub Cloud (github.com), the easiest way to get started is to install the Mend Renovate app from the GitHub marketplace. When you use the app, Mend will:

authenticate the Renovate app to GitHub
keep the tokens safe
maintain and update the Renovate version used

If you self-host Renovate you must do the things listed above yourself. Self-hosting is meant for users with advanced use cases, or who want to be in full control of the bot and the environment it runs in. We recommend most users install the Mend Renovate app.

Read the Security and Permissions page to learn about the Security and Permissions needed for the Mend Renovate app.

After you installed the hosted app, please read the reading list to learn how to use and configure Renovate.

Authentication¶

First, create a fine-grained or a classic PAT. The PAT must have the repo scope. If you want Renovate to also update your GitHub Action files, you must grant the workflow scope.

Read the GitHub Docs, about Personal Access Tokens to learn more about PATs.

Let Renovate use your PAT by doing one of the following:

Set your PAT as a token in your config.js file
Set your PAT as an environment variable RENOVATE_TOKEN
Set your PAT when you run Renovate in the CLI with --token=

Remember to set platform=github somewhere in your Renovate config file.

If you use GitHub Enterprise Server then endpoint must point to https://github-enterprise.example.com/api/v3/. You can choose where you want to set endpoint:

In your config.js file
In a environment variable
In a CLI parameter

Labels and forking mode

If you're self-hosting Renovate on GitHub.com with GitHub Actions in forking mode, and want Renovate to apply labels then you must give the PAT triage level rights on issues. The triage level allows the PAT to apply/dismiss existing labels.

Running using a fine-grained token¶

Permissions¶

A fine-grained token must have these permissions:

Permission	Access	Level
`Members`	`Read-only`	Organization
`Commit statuses`	`Read and write`	Repository or Organization
`Contents`	`Read and write`	Repository or Organization
`Dependabot alerts`	`Read-only`	Repository or Organization
`Issues`	`Read and write`	Repository or Organization
`Pull requests`	`Read and write`	Repository or Organization
`Workflows`	`Read and write`	Repository or Organization

Use a bot role account

Consider creating a GitHub App to use instead of using your own GitHub user account.

Running as a GitHub App¶

Instead of a bot account with a Personal Access Token you can run renovate as a self-hosted GitHub App.

When creating the GitHub App give it the following permissions:

Permission	Scope
Checks	`read` + `write`
Commit statuses	`read` + `write`
Contents	`read` + `write`
Issues	`read` + `write`
Pull requests	`read` + `write`
Workflows	`read` + `write`
Administration	`read`
Dependabot alerts	`read`
Members	`read`
Metadata	`read`

Other values like Homepage URL, User authorization callback URL and webhooks can be disabled or filled with dummy values.

Inside your config.js you need to set the following values, assuming the name of your app is self-hosted-renovate:

token:"ghs_123exampletoken"

You must use a GitHub App Installation token.

Previously, the token had to be prefixed with x-access-token:. We recommend you replace any prefixed tokens with normal tokens. We will drop support for prefixed tokens in the future.

Any tokens that do not start with ghs_ (for example tokens from GitHub Enterprise Server versions before version 3.2) must be prefixed with x-access-token:.

Note

The installation tokens expire after 1 hour and need to be regenerated regularly. Alternatively as environment variable RENOVATE_TOKEN, or via CLI --token=.

Third-party tools to regenerate installation tokens

If you're self-hosting Renovate within a GitHub Actions workflow, then you can use the actions/create-github-app-token action. If you use Node.js/CLI, then you can use the github-app-installation-token package. If you use Docker, then you can use the mshekow/github-app-installation-token image.

repositories: ["orgname/repo-1","orgname/repo-2"]

List of repositories to run on. Alternatively as comma-separated environment variable RENOVATE_REPOSITORIES. The GitHub App installation token is scoped at most to a single organization and running on multiple organizations requires multiple invocations of renovate with different token and repositories parameters.

username:"self-hosted-renovate[bot]" (optional, autodetected if not supplied)

The slug name of your app with [bot] appended

gitAuthor:"Self-hosted Renovate Bot <123456+self-hosted-renovate[bot]@users.noreply.github.enterprise.com>" (optional, autodetected if not supplied)

The GitHub App associated email to match commits to the bot. It needs to have the user id and the username followed by the users.noreply.-domain of either github.com or the GitHub Enterprise Server. A way to get the user id of a GitHub app is to query the user API at api.github.com/users/self-hosted-renovate[bot] (github.com) or github.enterprise.com/api/v3/users/self-hosted-renovate[bot] (GitHub Enterprise Server).

Package Registry Credentials¶

When Renovate runs against repositories on github.com, and the environment variable RENOVATE_X_GITHUB_HOST_RULES is set, then Renovate automatically provisions hostRules for these GitHub Packages registries using the platform token:

ghcr.io
maven.pkg.github.com
npm.pkg.github.com
nuget.pkg.github.com
rubygems.pkg.github.com

Warning

We reverted the Package Registry Credentials feature to experimental mode, because users reported it's not working correctly with app tokens.