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Config Template Editing

This document describes how you can edit branch names, commit messages, PR titles and PR content.

Branch Name

The branch name is very important for Renovate because it helps determine "grouping" of updates, and also makes it efficient when an existing PR needs to be updated when a newer version of a package is released. If you change the branchPrefix while you have ignored some upgrades (closed PR without merging), you might get a duplicate PR after the new branchPrefix setting is picked up by the bot.

branchName default value is {{{branchPrefix}}}{{{additionalBranchPrefix}}}{{{branchTopic}}}.

The most common branch name you will see looks like this: renovate/react-18.x. In this example, the branchPrefix is the default renovate/, additionalBranchPrefix is empty, and branchTopic is react-18.x.

Most users will be happy with the default branchPrefix of renovate/, but you can change this if you don't like the default. Say you don't want the forward slashes, in that case you would use renovate- as your branchPrefix. The onboarding PR will always use renovate/configure.

additionalBranchPrefix is optional and by default is empty.

branchTopic depends on the package manager and upgrade type, so you will see a lot of variety. This is probably a setting you want to change yourself. Be careful, and consider creating a new "config help" post at the discussions tab in the Renovate repository to get help from the Renovate team with your config.

Commit Message

Renovate uses one commit per branch. The commitMessage reflects the contents of the branch and is usually the same as the PR title.

commitMessage has a default value of {{{commitMessagePrefix}}} {{{commitMessageAction}}} {{{commitMessageTopic}}} {{{commitMessageExtra}}} {{{commitMessageSuffix}}}, with the intention that you only edit some of those subcomponents.

You usually don't need to edit commitMessagePrefix, this option is used by Renovate if it needs to add a prefix to conform to the Semantic Commit convention. Avoid editing the commit message, unless you know what you're doing.

commitMessageAction is usually one word, like 'Update', 'Pin', 'Refresh', etc. You're probably fine leaving this setting alone, though you can change it. e.g. if you prefer that Renovate uses the term 'Upgrade' instead of 'Update' then you could configure "commitMessageAction": "Upgrade".

commitMessageTopic is usually two to three words that show what is being updated. e.g. it might be dependency react or Docker image ubuntu. You may want to edit this. If you think your new commitMessageTopic is helpful for others, please open a PR.

commitMessageExtra refers to the version being updated to. e.g. to v18 for a major upgrade, or to v18.0.2 for a patch update. It can be empty in some cases, like if the action/topic doesn't change a package version, e.g. Pin Docker digests.

commitMessageSuffix defaults to empty but is currently used in two cases:

  • Differentiating major from non-major groups
  • Differentiating between PRs from different base branches, maybe for major updates you always want the PR to end with (MAJOR), for instance

commitBody is used if you wish to add multi-line commit messages, such as for the Signed-off-by fields, or adding [skip-ci], etc. It is appended to the generated commitMessage, separated by a newline.

PR Title

Because commit messages match with the PR title, the PR title template defaults to null and inherits/copies the value from commitMessage. If you have a requirement where prTitle should be different from commitMessage, then please raise a feature request for discussion.

PR Body

You can change the PR body in the following ways:

  • Change the entire layout/flow by using prBodyTemplate (we do not recommend this)
  • Add a header by using prHeader
  • Add a footer by using prFooter
  • Add a note by using prBodyNotes
  • Edit the embedded table by using prBodyDefinitions and prBodyColumns