index.md

title
Managers

Managers

Renovate is based around the concept of "package managers", or "managers" for short. These range from traditional package managers like npm, Bundler and Composer through to less traditional concepts like CircleCI or Travis config files.

The goal of Renovate is to detect and maintain all third-party dependencies in your repositories, through the use of managers.

Supported Managers

Configuring Managers

File Matching

Most managers have a default fileMatch array. The fileMatch array has regular expression strings that match against the repository file list.

Managers with no default fileMatch

Some managers have no default fileMatch regular expression, because they have no filename convention that would let Renovate intelligently filter them. In such a case, the manager will be disabled until you create a fileMatch regular expression, e.g. like the following:

{
  "kubernetes": {
    "fileMatch": ["^config/.*\\.yaml$"]
  }
}

Extending a manager's default fileMatch

If the default fileMatch regular expression for a manager does not match against one of your relevant files, you can extend the existing regular expression(s) by configuring a manager's fileMatch like in this example:

{
  "dockerfile": {
    "fileMatch": ["does-not-look-like-a-docker-file"]
  }
}

Ignoring files that match the default fileMatch

Renovate will extend the existing fileMatch, meaning you don't need to include the default regular expressions like Dockerfile in your own array. In other words, the regular expression are "additive". If a manager matches a file that you don't want it to, ignore it using the ignorePaths configuration option. Also, if you ever find that Renovate is not matching a file name that you're certain it should, check your preset config isn't the cause of it. The config:recommended preset ignores common test and example directory names, for example.

Enabling and disabling managers

Enabling experimental managers

Most managers are enabled by default. For those that aren't, typically because they are considered experimental, you can opt-in manually. If there was a manager called some-new-manager you would enable it like this:

{
  "some-new-manager": {
    "enabled": true
  }
}

Disabling managers

To disable a specific manager like gradle, do this:

{
  "gradle": {
    "enabled": false
  }
}

Please check the list of supported managers.

Limiting enabled managers

Say you only want to use Renovate for JavaScript packages, and to update your Dockerfile, and don't want any other updates. You can use the enabledManagers array, to list the managers you want to use (npm, dockerfile):

{
  "enabledManagers": ["npm", "dockerfile"]
}

Using the enabledManagers array disables all other managers, this includes Bundler, Composer, Docker Compose, etc.