How to group "major" and "minor" for specific updates when using :separateMajorReleases

[jpgoelz]

How are you running Renovate?

Self-hosted

If you're self-hosting Renovate, tell us what version of Renovate you run.

37.59.8

If you're self-hosting Renovate, select which platform you are using.

GitLab self-hosted

Was this something which used to work for you, and then stopped?

I never saw this working

Wanted end result.

We usually want to separate minor and major releases, which is why we are using :separateMajorReleases and :separatePatchReleases.

However, in the complicated world of Angular updates, we need to group some major updates with certain minor updates.

For example:
There is an update from Angular 16 to 17 at the moment.
However, @angular-devkit/architect, which is part of Angular, holds the major version in the minor field for some reason: Update from 0.1602.10 to 0.1700.1 instead of 16.2.10 to 17.0.1.
The same is true for zone.js, which is part of Angular as well. Version 0.13.x was for Angular 16 while 0.14.x is for Angular 17.

Angular is very strict about the needed versions, and the latter always leads to the Renovate merge request not being able to npm install:

So tl;dr: The wanted end result is a package rule (or set thereof) that makes it possible to combine the needed minor upgrades into the same branch as the major upgrade while still separating major, minor, and patch releases for all other dependencies.

What you tried so far.

We currently have tried these rules:

  packageRules: [
    {
      groupName: "Angular Major",
      groupSlug: "angular-major",
      matchUpdateTypes: ["major"],
      matchSourceUrls: [
        "https://github.com/angular/angular",
        "https://github.com/angular/angular-cli",
      ],
    },
    {
      groupName: "Angular Major",
      matchUpdateTypes: ["minor"],
      matchPackageNames: ["zone.js", "@angular-devkit/architect"],
    },
  }

However, because we extend :separateMajorReleases and :separatePatchReleases, we get separate merge requests:

Relevant debug logs

No response

[rarkins]

We usually want to separate minor and major releases, which is why we are using :separateMajorReleases and :separatePatchReleases.

Neither of these settings are relevant to "separate minor and major releases". The relevant settings is separateMajorMinor, which defaults to true. You should remove both these settings if that's your only reason, because it will make everything else you're asking about more complicated

[jpgoelz]

Let me clarify:
We use these settings, because we want to have separate merge requests for patch, minor, and major versions.
For example: A dependency may be at v1.2.3. Our build breaks for v1.3.0, but we do not want to miss 1.2.4. One of those cases is Spring Boot. We only got updates for v3, but are at v2.7 and did not get the patch or minor updates separately.

Also this confuses me:

Neither of these settings are relevant to "separate minor and major releases". The relevant settings is separateMajorMinor, [...]

According to the docs, :separateMajorReleases is exactly separateMajorMinor: true. Or do I misunderstand this?

[rarkins]

Sorry you're right - that name confused me (thought it was separateMultipleMajor=true).

[rarkins]

What are the current branch names for the two updates you want to combine?

[jpgoelz]

The names are renovate/major-angular-major for "Update Angular Major to v17 (major)" and renovate/angular-major for "Update Angular Major (minor)".

[rarkins]

Try adding "groupSlug": "major-angular-major" to the second packageRule

[jpgoelz]

That worked, thanks!

The dependencies are now grouped as expected. The Title now reads "Update Angular Major (minor)" but I guess I can fix that with prTitle.

However, now of course TypeScript needs to also increase the version and npm won't install. Renovate and Angular just don't play that well together. 😅 But that is not relevant for this discussion.