How to Update Dependencies Safely and Automatically with GitHub Actions and Renovate

As a full-stack developer, I know firsthand how challenging it can be to keep a project‘s dependencies up-to-date. With the speed at which new versions are released, manually monitoring and testing updates can quickly eat up your valuable time.

But neglecting those updates comes with serious risks. Bugs, security holes, performance issues, and incompatibilities can creep in unnoticed – until they blow up in production. That‘s not a position any of us want to be in!

Fortunately, there are some fantastic tools available to automate most of the process. By combining GitHub Actions for continuous integration and Renovate for dependency updates, you can keep your project safe and current without the manual overhead.

In this post, I‘ll walk through everything you need to know to modernize your dependency workflow. We‘ll cover the various benefits of staying updated, how to configure a GitHub Actions workflow to fully test changes, and how Renovate can automatically generate pull requests and merge them for you. Let‘s dive in!

The Importance of Keeping Dependencies Updated

Before setting up any automation, it‘s worth taking a closer look at why it‘s so critical to keep your project‘s dependencies updated.

Industry data shows that outdated dependencies are a huge risk factor:

• 75% of developers say vulnerable components are their top concern [source]
• 26% of Java projects rely on at least one vulnerable library [source]
• Projects that reach at least 80% current dependencies fix security issues 50% faster [source]

These stats paint a clear picture that falling behind on updates makes your application a sitting duck for attackers. With new exploits being discovered and disclosed every week, avoiding patches is simply not an option.

But even beyond security, there are some major benefits to staying current:

Access to new features & improvements

With every release, dependency maintainers add new capabilities, refine existing APIs, improve performance, and more. Updating gives you immediate access.

For example, the popular Express web framework release notes show a steady stream of improvements:

• v4.17.1: "5-10% performance improvement for the most common usage" [source]
• v4.16.0: "Add express.raw() to parse bodies into Buffer" [source]
• v4.15.0: "deps: [email protected] – Fix vulnerability" [source]

Staying a few versions behind could mean you‘re missing out on useful new tools, leaving performance on the table, or exposing your users to known vulnerabilities!

Easier bug fixes & troubleshooting

When you encounter strange behavior or errors, having up-to-date dependencies makes troubleshooting far easier. You can take advantage of the latest fixes, improved error handling, and more robust logging.

You‘re also in a better position to get community support. If you open an issue on a dependency‘s tracker, maintainers will expect you to be on a recent version. Being several releases behind may get your ticket closed as "stale."

Upgrading also forces you to stay on top of any deprecations or breaking changes. It‘s much easier to make small adjustments with each release than to wait and have to refactor large parts of your codebase in one huge effort.

Fewer version conflicts

If you‘ve ever tried to add a new dependency to a project, only to be met with a massive tree of version conflicts, you know this pain! The further your dependencies drift from the latest versions, the harder it becomes to introduce new libraries.

Frequent small updates make it far easier to keep everything in sync and avoid those massive conflict headaches. You can be confident your code will still build as you add the latest tools.

With modern package managers like npm and Yarn, it‘s also important to keep your lockfiles current. This ensures every developer and CI job is using the exact same dependency tree, down to the patch level. Even a single version mismatch can lead to frustrating "works on my machine" bugs.

Introducing GitHub Actions for CI/CD

Hopefully you‘re convinced of the value of keeping dependencies updated! But doing it manually is tedious and error-prone. That‘s where GitHub Actions comes in.

GitHub Actions is a powerful platform for automating your software development workflows. At a high level, you define your build, test, and deployment processes in a YAML file. Then you configure GitHub to run those steps every time you push code, open a pull request, or trigger them manually.

Here are the key building blocks:

• Workflow: A configurable automated process that you can set up in your repository. Defined in a YAML file in .github/workflows/
• Job: A set of steps that execute on the same runner (virtual machine). You configure the environment and dependencies needed. Jobs run in parallel by default.
• Step: An individual task that can run commands, custom scripts, or predefined "actions". Steps in a job execute sequentially.
• Action: The building block of workflows. A reusable chunk of code that performs a task, like checking out your repository or publishing to npm.

Let‘s walk through a basic workflow to see how this all fits together.

Creating a Workflow File

Start by creating a new file named .github/workflows/main.yml in your project. This will define the steps to build, test, and (optionally) deploy your application.

Here‘s a minimal example for a Node.js project:

name: CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest 
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: Use Node.js
      uses: actions/setup-node@v1
      with:
        node-version: 14.x
    - run: npm ci
    - run: npm run build
    - run: npm test
      env:
        CI: true

This workflow does the following:

1. Runs on every push to any branch
2. Uses the latest Ubuntu virtual machine
3. Checks out the repository code with a prebuilt action
4. Sets up Node.js 14.x
5. Runs npm ci to cleanly install dependencies
6. Builds the project with npm run build
7. Runs the test suite with npm test

That‘s a good starting point, but you‘ll likely want to expand on this for a real project:

• Build matrix: Run the steps on multiple operating systems and dependency versions to ensure compatibility. For example:

runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
strategy:
  matrix:
    os: [ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, macOS-latest] 
    node-version: [12.x, 14.x]

• Dependency caching: Reuse the node_modules directory between runs to speed up your installation. Add these steps before npm ci:

- name: Cache Node.js modules
  uses: actions/cache@v2
  with:
    path: ~/.npm
    key: ${{ runner.OS }}-node-${{ hashFiles(‘**/package-lock.json‘) }}
    restore-keys: |
      ${{ runner.OS }}-node-

• Multi-stage builds: Split your job into multiple steps for better organization and parallelization. For example, run linting and type checking in parallel with your tests.

• Selective running: Use additional if conditions to decide whether a workflow should run given the event details. For example, skip builds on markdown file changes:

on:
  push:
    paths-ignore: 
      - "**.md"

Advanced Workflows

The above only scratches the surface of what GitHub Actions can automate. Here are a few more ideas to supercharge your workflows:

• Security scanning: Run automated tools to check your code for vulnerabilities on every PR. For example, use Snyk to find issues in your dependencies.

• Performance budgets: Ensure your web app stays fast by setting performance budgets and measuring them on every build. Tools like Lighthouse CI can enforce budgets and fail PR checks when they‘re crossed.

• Canary deployments: Automatically deploy a scaled-down version of your app to a "canary" server on every PR. Then run smoke tests or A/B tests with a small percentage of live traffic. This will quickly catch bugs before they hit your full fleet.

Introducing Renovate for Dependency Updates

Renovate takes automated dependency management to the next level. It‘s a tool that constantly monitors your repository for outdated dependencies. When it finds updates, it opens pull requests to bump the versions and awaits your approval.

The magic happens when you combine Renovate with GitHub Actions. Because every Renovate PR will trigger your workflows, you can see the full impact of dependency changes before merging. If your tests fail on the new versions, you‘ll know right away.

Renovate can even automate the entire process for you with "automerge". If there are no issues with a change, Renovate can go ahead and merge the PR, keeping everything up-to-date without manual intervention! This is incredibly powerful for staying ahead of security vulnerabilities.

Let‘s break down the steps to set up Renovate and optimize your configuration.

Installing the Renovate App

The easiest way to use Renovate is through the official GitHub App. Just follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your GitHub organization or user account
2. Click "Settings" and select "Installed GitHub Apps"
3. Click "Add" next to Renovate
4. Choose which repositories you want to enable Renovate on (I recommend starting with a few to test it out)
5. Click "Install"

That‘s all it takes! Renovate will now start scanning your selected repositories for dependency updates. By default, it will open new pull requests weekly with any available upgrades.

Configuring Renovate

While the default settings are a great starting point, you‘ll likely want to customize Renovate‘s behavior to better match your project‘s needs. Some common options:

Automatic Patch & Minor Updates

For most projects, automatically merging all patch and minor updates is a relatively safe bet. These tend to contain important bug & security fixes but rarely introduce breaking changes.

You can enable this by adding a renovate.json file to your repository root:

{
  "extends": [
    "config:base", 
    ":automergePatch",
    ":automergeMinor"  
  ]
}

Scheduling Pull Requests

If you prefer to batch dependency updates or avoid noise during working hours, you can define a custom schedule:

{
  "schedule": [
    "after 10pm every weekday",
    "before 5am every weekday",
    "every weekend"
  ]
}

Grouping Monorepo Updates

For projects using a monorepo layout (e.g. Lerna or Yarn Workspaces), you can configure Renovate to group updates together and avoid duplicate PRs:

{
  "separateMajorMinor": false, 
  "separateMultipleMajor": false,
  "lockFileMaintenance": { "enabled": true }
}  

Automerging Non-Major Versions

As you get more comfortable with Renovate, I strongly recommend enabling automerge for minor and patch versions:

{
  "packageRules": [{
    "updateTypes": ["minor", "patch"],
    "automerge": true
  }]
}

With this option, Renovate will automatically merge these smaller updates whenever they pass your GitHub Actions checks. You‘ll stay fully up-to-date without any manual intervention needed! This is the true power of the Renovate + GitHub Actions combo.

Of course, there are many more configuration options to fine-tune Renovate‘s behavior. Take a look at the full docs for all the details.

Final Thoughts

Keeping a project‘s dependencies up-to-date used to require a massive amount of manual effort and discipline. But today, every development team can – and should – automate the process with tools like GitHub Actions and Renovate.

The payoff is immense. You‘ll have more secure, performant, and stable applications. Far less time sunk into tedious upgrades. And most importantly, happier developers who are free to spend their time delivering awesome features.

If you‘re looking for more advanced inspiration, I highly recommend checking out the workflow configurations of some high-profile open source projects:

• Jest
• Angular
• Storybook
• Gatsby

These projects have battle-tested, industrial-strength setups that are great references for creating your own.

I‘ll leave you with a challenge: Schedule an hour this week to set up GitHub Actions and Renovate on one of your projects. Start simple and gradually add more automation over time. I think you‘ll be amazed at how much time and mental energy you save.

Have questions or other ideas for supercharging your automation? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments below! I‘d love to hear how you‘re using these tools in your own pipelines.