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Semantic Commit messages

Renovate looks at the last 10 commit messages in the base branch to decide if the repository uses semantic commits. If there are Semantic Commits, Renovate uses the conventional-commits-detector to decide what convention the commit messages follow.

Renovate can only find Angular-style conventional commits, it does not "understand" other commit conventions.

When Renovate finds Angular-style commits, Renovate creates commit messages and PR titles like this:

  • chore(deps): update eslint to v7.30.0

By default, Renovate uses the chore prefix.

If you extend from config:recommended then Renovate uses the chore prefix for nearly all updates. There are some exceptions:

  • if the depType is a known "production dependency" type (e.g. dependencies or require), then Renovate uses the fix prefix
  • if an update uses the maven datasource and matchDepTypes is a known production type (e.g. compile, provided, runtime, system, import or parent) then Renovate uses the fix prefix

Be aware that the semantic commits feature does not work if you have a commitMessagePrefix configured - commitMessagePrefix will take priority.

Manually enabling or disabling semantic commits

You can override the default settings, and disable or enable Semantic Commits.

If you want Renovate to use Semantic Commits
{
  "extends": [":semanticCommits"]
}
If you want Renovate to stop using Semantic Commits
{
  "extends": [":semanticCommitsDisabled"]
}

Changing the Semantic Commit type

You can change the Semantic Commit type that Renovate uses. For example:

  • If you want Renovate to use the "chore" type for every PR, add ":semanticCommitTypeAll(chore)" to your extends array:
{
  "extends": [":semanticCommitTypeAll(chore)"]
}

PR titles and commit messages start with chore(deps):.

  • If you want Renovate to use the "ci" type for every PR, add ":semanticCommitTypeAll(ci)" to your extends array:
{
  "extends": [":semanticCommitTypeAll(ci)"]
}

PR titles and commit messages start with ci(deps):.

Changing the Semantic Commit scope

You can set your own word for the scope, if you do not like the default "deps" scope. For example, to set the scope to "package", add the preset ":semanticCommitScope(package)" to your extends array:

{
  "extends": [":semanticCommitScope(package)"]
}

To remove the Semantic Commit scope, so Renovate uses chore: instead of chore(deps):, add the ":semanticCommitScopeDisabled" preset to your extends array:

{
  "extends": [":semanticCommitScopeDisabled"]
}