Run renovate locally without using any platform

[bilak]

What would you like Renovate to be able to do?

While renovate bot is running correctly in platforms such gitlab/gihub it's sometimes required to test changes locally (e.g. sometimes it's much faster, sometimes one does not have privileges to change some configuration).

To do so it would be nice to leverage the docker images where it could be possible to:

• include local repositories as volume
• platform could be set to something like local
• only branches are created when new versions are found

module.exports = {
    endpoint: 'file:///git-repositories',
    platform: 'local',
    onboardingConfig: {
        extends: ['config:base'],
    },
    repositories: [
        {
            repository: 'repo1,
            packageRules: [
                {
                    description: 'Disable MAJOR update types',
                    matchUpdateTypes: ['major'],
                    enabled: false,
                },
            ],
        },
    ],
}

so if there is a parent directory called work containing subdirectories (e.g. repo1, repo2) with git project one can run following docker command:

$ docker run --rm -it -v $PWD/config.js:/usr/src/app/config.js -v /path/to/work:/git-repositories -e LOG_LEVEL=debug renovate/renovate

If you have any ideas on how this should be implemented, please tell us here.

not an javascript dev :(

Is this a feature you are interested in implementing yourself?

No

[nabeelsaabna]

Hi @bilak
would dry-run work ?

[bilak]

@nabeelsaabna can I reference local repository with dry-run?

[nabeelsaabna]

no, Renovate runs only with platform.
the dry-run means the remote repository is read-only

[bilak]

@nabeelsaabna sorry for delay...this will still need some changes to be pushed to remote repository. I'm struggling with gradle setup so I don't want to mess with it and affect that other developers. It would be really useful to have an option to execute renovate against local repo.

[viceice]

you should use a fork to test against

[bilak]

@viceice still not very practical. I have to disable ci/cd and don't know what other stuff. Besides that if I'm not a gitlab admin I will have hard times to configure the bot correctly.

[childnode]

I expect this is outdated, because there is the platform local available https://docs.renovatebot.com/modules/platform/local/
since 35.76.0 and documented as of 35.77.0 back in 2023 << #22010

[astellingwerf]

The problem with the local platform is that it doesn't properly support preset resolution. It shouldn't be too hard to resolve them relative to a folder on the filesystem, right?