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Release notes for major versions of Renovate

It can be hard to keep track of the changes between major versions of Renovate. To help you, we've listed the breaking changes, plus the developer commentary for the latest major releases.

The most recent versions are always at the top of the page. This is because recent versions may revert changes made in an older version. You also don't have to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the latest release notes.

Version 36

Breaking changes

  • postUpgradeTasks.fileFilters is now optional and defaults to all files
  • languages are now called categories instead. Use matchCategories in packageRules
  • Node v19 is no longer supported
  • datasource: semver-coerced is now the default versioning
  • presets: Preset config:base is now called config:recommended (will be migrated automatically)
  • remove BUILDPACK env support
  • package-rules: matchPackageNames now matches both depName (existing) and packageName (new) and warns if only depName matches
  • release-notes: Release notes won't be fetched early for commitBody insertion unless explicitly configured with fetchReleaseNotes=branch
  • dockerImagePrefix is now replaced by dockerSidecarImage
  • matchPaths and matchFiles are now combined into matchFileNames, supporting exact match and glob-only. The "any string match" functionality of matchPaths is now removed
  • presets: v25 compatibility for language-based branch prefixes is removed
  • npm: Rollback PRs will no longer be enabled by default for npm (they are now disabled by default for all managers)
  • post-upgrade-tasks: dot files will now be included by default for all minimatch results
  • platform/gitlab: GitLab gitAuthor will change from the account's "email" to "commit_email" if they are different
  • automerge: Platform automerge will now be chosen by default whenever automerge is enabled
  • Post upgrade templating is now allowed by default, as long as the post upgrade task command is itself already allowed
  • Official Renovate Docker images now use the "slim" approach with binarySource=install by default. e.g. renovate/renovate:latest is the slim image, not full
  • The "full" image is now available via the tag full, e.g. renovate/renovate:36-full, and defaults to binarySource=global (no dynamic installs)
  • Third party tools in the full image have been updated to latest/LTS major version

Commentary

If you're self-hosting Renovate, pay particular attention to:

  • Do you want to run the full, or slim versions of the image? We have switched the defaults (latest is now slim, not full)
  • Have you configured dockerImagePrefix? If so then you need to use dockerSidecarImage instead
  • If you're using config:base in your onboardingConfig then switch to config:recommended
  • gitAuthor may change if you're on GitLab and have a different commit email for your bot account. If so then configure gitIgnoredAuthors with the old email

Release notes for v36 on GitHub.

Version 35

Breaking changes

  • require NodeJS v18.12+ (#20838)
  • config: Forked repos will now be processed automatically if autodiscover=false. includeForks is removed and replaced by new option forkProcessing
  • Internal checks such as renovate/stability-days will no longer count as passing/green, meaning that actions such as automerge won't occur if the only checks are Renovate internal ones. Set internalChecksAsSuccess=true to restore existing behavior
  • versioning: default versioning is now semver-coerced, instead of semver
  • datasource/github-releases: Regex Manager configurations relying on the github-release data-source with digests will have different digest semantics. The digest will now always correspond to the underlying Git SHA of the release/version. The old behavior can be preserved by switching to the github-release-attachments datasource
  • versioning: bump short ranges to version (#20494)
  • config: containerbase/ account used for sidecar containers instead of renovate/
  • go: Renovate will now use go's default GOPROXY settings. To avoid using the public proxy, configure GOPROXY=direct
  • datasource/npm: Package cache will include entries for up to 24 hours after the last lookup. Set cacheHardTtlMinutes=0 to revert to existing behavior
  • config: Renovate now defaults to applying hourly and concurrent PR limits. To revert to unlimited, configure them back to 0
  • config: Renovate will now default to updating locked dependency versions. To revert to previous behavior, configure rangeStrategy=replace
  • config: PyPI releases will no longer be filtered by default based on constraints.python compatibility. To retain existing functionality, set constraintsFiltering=strict

Commentary

Most of these changes will be invisible to the majority of users. They may be "breaking" (change of behavior) but good changes of defaults to make.

The biggest change is defaulting rangeStrategy=auto to use update-lockfile instead of replace, which impacts anyone using the recommended config:base. This will mean that you start seeing some "lockfile-only" PRs for in-range updates, such as updating package-lock.json when a range exists in package.json.

Release notes for v35 on GitHub.

Version 34

Breaking changes

  • Revert branchNameStrict to false

Commentary

Here comes v34 hot on the heels of v33. We decided to issue another breaking change to revert one of the breaking changes in v33.

If you are upgrading from v32 to v34 then it means that the setting for branchNameStrict remains as false and you don't need to worry about that.

If you already upgraded from v32 to v33 then you have a decision to make first:

  • set branchNameStrict to true (like in v33),
  • or let it set back to false (like in v32).

Strict branch naming meant that all special characters other than letters, numbers and hyphens were converted to hyphens and then deduplicated, e.g. a branch which in v32 was like renovate/abc.def-2.x would become renovate/abc-def-2-x in v33. If you prefer to revert back to the old way then that will happen automatically in v34. If you prefer to keep the way in v33 because you already had a bunch of PRs closed and reopened due to branch names, and don't want to do that again, then add branchNameStrict: false to your bot config or your shared config before updating to v34.

Apologies to anyone negatively affected by this v33 change.

Release notes for v34 on GitHub.

Version 33

Breaking changes

  • Node 16 is the required runtime for Renovate
  • [NOTE: This was reverted in v34] config: branchNameStrict default value is now true
  • config: internalChecksFilter default value is now "strict"
  • config: ignoreScripts default value is now true. If allowScripts=true in global config, ignoreScripts must be set to false in repo config if you want all repos to run scripts
  • config: autodiscover filters can no longer include commas
  • config: boolean variables must be true or false when configured in environment variables, and errors will be thrown for invalid values. Previously invalided values were ignored and treated as false
  • datasource/go: git-tags datasource will be used as the fallback instead of github-tags if a go package's host type is unknown
  • jsonnet-bundler: depName now uses the "absolute import" format (e.g. bar-> github.com/foo/bar/baz-wow)
  • azure-pipelines: azure-pipelines manager is now disabled by default
  • github: No longer necessary to configure forkMode. Forking mode is now experimental
  • Users of containerbase images (such as official Renovate images) will now have dynamic package manager installs enabled by default
  • Dependencies are no longer automatically pinned if rangeStrategy=auto, pinning must be opted into using rangeStrategy=pin

Commentary

This release contains some changes of default values/behavior:

  • internalChecksFilter will now default to strict, meaning that updates will be withheld by default when internal status checks are pending. This should reduce the number of "non-actionable" Pull Requests you get
  • azure-pipelines manager is disabled by default, because its primary datasource can unfortunately suggest updates which aren't yet installable. Users should opt into this manager once they know the risks
  • binarySource=install will now be used instead of global whenever Renovate is run within a "containerbase" image. This means dynamic installation of most package managers and languages
  • Dependencies will no longer be pinned by default if rangeStrategy=auto. While we recommend pinning dependencies, we decided users should opt into this more explicitly

And two major features!

  • AWS CodeCommit platform support
  • OpenTelemetry support

Both the above are considered "experimental". Please test them out and let us know your feedback - both positive or negative - so that we can progress them to fully available.

Release notes for v33 on GitHub.