Forking Renovate, why re-open old config error issue, and why no config warning on Dependency Dashboard?

[HonkingGoose]

What would you like help with?

Other

How are you running Renovate?

Self-hosted

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

Forking Renovate, GitHub, do not know what version

Please tell us more about your question or problem

I commented on a PR on another repository to answer some questions from a user about their Renovate config:

• chore: Fix Renovate config slsa-framework/slsa-github-generator#3635 (comment)

The member of the repository asked me some more questions based on my comment:

• chore: Fix Renovate config slsa-framework/slsa-github-generator#3635 (comment)

I don't know the answer to two of their questions. So I'm asking them here:

• Why does Forking Renovate re-open a old config error issue: Action Required: Fix Renovate Configuration slsa-framework/slsa-github-generator#404, instead of creating a new config error issue? This effectively "hides" the old issue behind newer issues, because GitHub defaults to show the highest (newest) issue numbers first.
• Why does the Forking Renovate Dependency Dashboard not warn about their config error? Dependency Dashboard slsa-framework/slsa-github-generator#408 Check the edit history, got to forking-renovate bot edited on Dec 6, 2023 to a WARN: Package lookup failures message, but no config error message.

Luckily I managed to answer at least one of their questions. 🙃

Logs (if relevant)

No logs, as I don't have access to their logs

Replace this text with your logs, between the starting and ending triple backticks

[rarkins]

In the old days we had a few incidents where Renovate kept making issues over and over, so I defaulted behavior to reopen/reuse the old issue to keep the noise lower. It's maybe time to instead stop the reopening

[HonkingGoose]

We have a configWarningReuseIssue config option:

configWarningReuseIssue

Set this to false to make Renovate create a new issue for each config warning, instead of reopening or reusing an existing issue.

Name	Value
type	boolean
default	true
cli	--config-warning-reuse-issue
env	RENOVATE_CONFIG_WARNING_REUSE_ISSUE

Renovate's default behavior is to reuse/reopen a single Config Warning issue in each repository so as to keep the "noise" down. However for some people this has the downside that the config warning won't be sorted near the top if you view issues by creation date. Configure this option to false if you prefer Renovate to open a new issue whenever there is a config warning.

I'm opening a PR on their repository to set configWarningReuseIssue to false, so Renovate matches their expectations:

• chore: allow Renovate to create new config warning issues slsa-framework/slsa-github-generator#3662

Issue to change default behavior in the v38 major release?

Changing the default behavior could go in the major v38 release. Do you want me to create an issue then, for us to track the work?

The issue would be labeled as a breaking change and for v38, and have these todos:

• default configWarningReuseIssue to false, so Renovate opens a new issue by default
• update tests
• update the docs
• write release note entry in the v38 changelog, that explain why we're making the change, and that users can opt-out by setting configWarningReuseIssue to true so Renovate re-opens the old issue

[HonkingGoose]

@rarkins can you read the comment above this one, and tell me if you want an issue to change the default behavior, so that Renovate creates a new config warning issue? That change could go in the new v38 release maybe?

[rarkins]

Yes, let's change the default in v38

[HonkingGoose]

See issue:

• Change default for configWarningReuseIssue to false #29504

[HonkingGoose]

I'm closing this Discussion as resolved, because:

• the slsa-framework/slsa-github-generator repository now has a working Renovate config with a bit of help from @rarkins and me
• we have an issue to change the default behavior of configWarningReissue to false in a upcoming major release: Change default for configWarningReuseIssue to false #29504