Debug Renovate Configuration

Test Renovate configuration changes locally with the renovate-dryrun command. This wrapper script runs Renovate in dry-run mode against the current repository and displays a formatted summary of proposed updates.

Usage

# Allocate a unique log path first so parallel sessions don't clobber each other
LOG=$(mktemp /tmp/renovate-dryrun.XXXXXX.log)

# Basic usage (token is optional; falls back to gh auth token)
renovate-dryrun > "$LOG"

# Test specific branch (defaults to current branch)
renovate-dryrun --branch feature/update-deps > "$LOG"

# Debug mode with raw Renovate output
renovate-dryrun --raw > "$LOG"

The output displays proposed updates in this format:

[renovate/aws-5.x] chore(deps): update terraform aws to v5.68.0 (automerge: true)
  depName: aws
  version: 5.49.0 -> 5.68.0
  datasource: terraform-provider
  packageFile: terraform/tfaction/main.tf

Important Notes

• Validate renovate.json5 with:

  container run --rm -v "$PWD:/repo" -w /repo \
    ghcr.io/renovatebot/renovate:latest \
    renovate-config-validator --strict --no-global renovate.json5
  

  • Without --no-global, repo-config-only fields (e.g. customManagers[].managerFilePatterns) pass silently because the file is treated as global config
  • Pin the image to :latest. Do not use :slim or npx renovate

• You SHOULD save output to a unique path under /tmp/ (e.g. mktemp /tmp/renovate-dryrun.XXXXXX.log) since the command takes time and produces extensive output. Do not use a fixed filename — parallel sessions would overwrite each other.

• Token is optional. The script falls back to gh auth token automatically. Do NOT require --token or $GH_TOKEN unless the user explicitly provides one.

• Push is NOT required before running dry-run. The command reads the local renovate.json5 directly.