Renovate: Cannot determine logic between chore and fix

[kbrandwijk]

I'm wondering why some of the dependency updates have a fix(deps) PR while others have a chore(deps) PR. What is the logic for deciding between the two?

[rarkins]

package dpendencies are fix and devDependencies are chore. Both these are configurable though, so let me know if you want some other behaviour.

[kbrandwijk]

Minor updates to dependencies are supposed to be backwards compatible by the commit standards, so it does not make sense to me to release a new version until I actually use any of it. But if I can configure it, that's also fine.

[rarkins]

So you want fix only if it’s a major dependency update and chore for everything else?

[kbrandwijk]

Yes. Is there a way to specify this for specific dependencies too? That would be ideal.

[rarkins]

Yes it’s possible. I’ll respond with exactly how tomorrow

[rarkins]

So to begin with, the reason you are seeing the current behaviour is that Renovate's default preset for this is :semanticPrefixFixDepsChoreOthers. i.e. fix for dependencies and chore for others.

If you wished to reset everything to chore, you could add the preset :semanticCommitTypeAll(chore) to your extends array. It says to chore everything.

If you wish to then use fix only for major upgrades to dependencies, then you need to also add this configuration:

  "dependencies": {
    "major":  {
      "semanticCommitType": "fix"
    }
  }

This is a more specific override than the earlier one, i.e. it essentially says "but for major updates of package.json>dependencies, use the "fix" semantic commit type".

Let's say you also have a dependency "foobar" that you think needs "fix" for minor updates too. In that case you need a packageRule:

  "packageRules": [{
    "packageNames": ["foobar"],
    "minor": {
      "semanticCommitType": "fix"
    }
  }]

Combining all these together would look like:

{
  "extends": ["config:base", ":semanticCommitTypeAll(chore)"],
  "dependencies": {
    "major": {
      "semanticCommitType": "fix"
    }
  },
  "packageRules": [
    {
      "packageNames": ["foobar"],
      "minor": {
        "semanticCommitType": "fix"
      }
    }
  ]
}

[kbrandwijk]

Wonderful! I'll experiment with this tomorrow. How does this combine with autoMerge? Can I also put that on every level in your example above?

[rarkins]

Yes, you can add "automerge": true in the same places where the "semanticCommitType" configuration options already are.

If you are making config changes feel free to always post an issue to https://github.com/renovateapp/config-help first for me to look at, or @rarkins me from any public PR and I should see it.