Why is silent mode called that, instead of dry-run mode or no pr creation mode?

[HonkingGoose]

What would you like help with?

Other

How are you running Renovate?

None

If you're self-hosting Renovate, tell us which platform (GitHub, GitLab, etc) and which version of Renovate.

No response

Please tell us more about your question or problem

@oscr asked in #28154 (comment)

Why is silent mode called silent mode? Instead of e g dry-run mode or no pr creation mode?

The Renovate docs, onboarding behavior section explains why we have a silent mode:

Onboarding behavior

If an Organization installed Renovate with "All repositories" (instead of "Selected repositories"), then Renovate will default to "Silent" mode (dryRun=lookup).
We chose this behavior because:

• Too often an account or org administrator selects the "All repositories" option and accidentally onboards hundreds of repositories, and
• By offering this option, it means that org administrators can install Renovate into "All repositories" without worrying about the noise, and then let individual Repository admins decide if/when to start onboarding

If Renovate is installed, and you can see a job log, but Renovate is not onboarding your repository, look for dryRun in the logs to confirm you are in Silent mode and then change to Interactive mode either at the Repository level or Organization level.

Additionally, if an Organization is installed with "Selected repositories" then the app will change onboardingNoDeps to true so that an Onboarding PR is created even if no dependencies are detected.

But the docs do not explain why it's called silent mode, instead of something like dry-run mode or no pr creation mode. Maybe some platform like GitHub/Gitlab, uses the silent mode term, and we copied that for consistency with the platform option name?

It's probably a good idea to either:

• rename the option
• put in the docs why the option is called silent mode

Logs (if relevant)

No response

[rarkins]

It's because:

• It's not just no PRs, it's also no Issues
• It's a common term across other Mend capabilities, such as OSS security and SAST security, where status checks are also part of silent/non-silent

[HonkingGoose]

Trying to fix the docs with PR:

• docs(config overview): improve onboarding behavior section #28579