I newly have a self-hosted instance of Renovate setup. Now I also want to write down how I am actually using it.

Preconditions

My setup is as follows:

  • Renovate connects to my Forgejo instance. Read how this is done here.
  • I have defined a Forgejo user that Renovate will work as, in my case it is renovate-bot. You will not find this name in the configuration, but it is the user you created the token for. Remember this username, it will be important in a moment.

Setting up a repository

In my setup, Renovate only works on repositories it has access to. Due to that, I explicitly have to define which repositories it should work on:

  • Jump to your Forgejo Instance.
  • Navigate to the repository that Forgejo should work on.
  • Go to Settings - Collaborators.
  • Add the renovate-bot user as a collaborator. They need write access; altough I did not try out what happens with Read access.
  • Wait…

Renovate Onboarding

After the next run of Renovate (which you might do manually, or just wait until it happens), you will have a new Pull Request with the title Configure Renovate. Merge this Pull Request, and you are done!

Summary

Well, this was surprisingly easy. Renovate understood the versions of Docker images defined in my Dockerfiles, and also found all my requirements.txt files!

I will probably write about more configuration in a bit.