Regular Expression Versioning

Identifier

regex

Ranges/Constraints

❌ No range support.

Description

Regular Expression Versioning is designed to be a flexible fallback versioning approach if Renovate's other versioning schemes don't do the job.

The regex scheme makes use of Regular Expression capture groups.

The valid capture groups for regex versioning are:

• major, minor, and patch: at least one of these must be provided. When determining whether a package has updates, these values will be compared in the standard semantic versioning fashion. If any of these fields are omitted, they will be treated as if they were 0 -- in this way, you can describe versioning schemes with up to three incrementing values.
• build: this capture group can be used after you've already used the major, minor and patch capture groups and need a fourth version part. build updates are handled like patch updates.
• revision: this capture group can be used after you've already used the build capture groups and need a fifth version part. revision updates are handled like patch updates.
• prerelease: this value, if captured, will mark a given release as a prerelease (e.g. unstable). If this value is captured and you have configured "ignoreUnstable": true, the given release will be skipped.
• compatibility: this value defines the "build compatibility" of a given dependency. A proposed Renovate update will never change the specified compatibility value. For example, if you are pinning to 1.2.3-linux (and linux is captured as the compatibility value), Renovate will not update you to 1.2.4-osx.

The compatibility concept was originally introduced for Docker versioning but sometimes package authors may use/misuse suffixes to mean compatibility in other versioning schemes.

Important: all capture groups must contain only purely numeric values. Even if there is a string prefix which is identical in all available versions, it must not be part of the capture group. For example a build capture group containing r4 cannot be evaluated as number; Renovate cannot compare the build in this case. The capture group must be 4 instead.

Here is an example of using regex versioning to correct behavior of the guava Maven package, which misuses suffixes as compatibility indicators:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchPackageNames": ["com.google.guava:guava"],
      "versioning": "regex:^(?<major>\\d+)(\\.(?<minor>\\d+))?(\\.(?<patch>\\d+))?(-(?<compatibility>.*))?$"
    }
  ]
}

Here is another example, this time for handling python Docker images, which use both pre-release indicators as well as version suffixes for compatibility:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["python"],
      "versioning": "regex:^(?<major>\\d+)\\.(?<minor>\\d+)\\.(?<patch>\\d+)(?<prerelease>[^.-]+)?(-(?<compatibility>.*))?$"
    }
  ]
}

Here is another example, this time for handling Bitnami Docker images, which use build and revision indicators as well as version suffixes for compatibility:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["bitnami/**", "docker.io/bitnami/**"],
      "versioning": "regex:^(?<major>\\d+)\\.(?<minor>\\d+)\\.(?<patch>\\d+)(?:-(?<compatibility>.+)(?<build>\\d+)-r(?<revision>\\d+))?$"
    }
  ]
}

Here is another example, this time for handling ghcr.io/linuxserver/tautulli Docker images, which use major and build indicators with string prefixes:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["ghcr.io/linuxserver/tautulli"],
      "versioning": "regex:^v(?<major>\\d+)\\.(?<minor>\\d+)\\.(?<patch>\\d+)-ls(?<build>.+)$"
    }
  ]
}

Here is another example, this time for handling ghcr.io/linuxserver/openssh-server Docker images, which use patch, build and revision indicators with string prefixes:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["ghcr.io/linuxserver/openssh-server"],
      "versioning": "regex:^(?<major>\\d+)\\.(?<minor>\\d+)_p(?<patch>\\d+)-r(?<build>\\d)-ls(?<revision>.+)$"
    }
  ]
}

The regex scheme also accepts a comparator range wherever a version is matched against a constraint, such as allowedVersions and matchCurrentVersion, evaluated with the scheme's own version comparison: the major, minor, and patch capture groups are compared in that order of precedence, regardless of where they appear in the pattern. For example, calendar versioning YYYY.DD.MM (day before month) sorts correctly by capturing the month as minor and the day as patch, so comparison follows year, then month, then day. The supported operators are <, <=, >, >=, = and ==, and several comparators separated by whitespace or a comma are combined with logical AND. Because the comparison uses the scheme's own ordering rather than npm semver, a numeric suffix captured as build is ordered correctly, where semver would treat it as a prerelease and reject the range.

For example, to hold a GitLab EE image at or below a required upgrade stop, capture the -ee suffix as a numeric build group and cap it with allowedVersions:

{
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "matchDatasources": ["docker"],
      "matchPackageNames": ["gitlab/gitlab-ee"],
      "versioning": "regex:^(?<major>\\d+)\\.(?<minor>\\d+)\\.(?<patch>\\d+)-ee\\.(?<build>\\d+)$",
      "allowedVersions": "<=19.1.2-ee.0"
    }
  ]
}

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