External Dependency Dashboard

[amezin]

Tell us more.

Renovate does not support dependency dashboard on multiple platforms. In some cases, it's just not implemented (yet?), in other cases there are platform limitations. Also, maybe you just don't want a special issue in your repository and would prefer a different UI.

I'm using Renovate with Bitbucket Server - there seems to be no built-in "issues" (only Jira), also no markdown checkboxes. And I'd definitely not want the dashboard in Jira.

Instead, I can publish arbitrary HTML on Jenkins (and, for example, add links that trigger new jobs into it). I would be able to implement my own dashboard, if Renovate wrote all necessary information (detected dependencies, pending PRs, warnings, etc.) for all processed repos to a .json file (could it be called a "report"?).

Ideally, Renovate should also have a flag to avoid its dependency dashboard creation (to get rid of warnings in the log on unsupported platforms, and, maybe, get rid of the unwanted issue on supported ones), but still keep things like dependencyDashboardApproval working.

I'm willing to work on this feature myself - I only need an approval and maybe a suggestion on the format.

[secustor]

;) It is even called report: https://docs.renovatebot.com/self-hosted-configuration/#reporttype

Ideally, Renovate should also have a flag to avoid its dependency dashboard creation (to get rid of warnings in the log on unsupported platforms, and, maybe, get rid of the unwanted issue on supported ones), but still keep things like dependencyDashboardApproval working.

This will take some discussion and bigger refactoring as the Dashboard are at the moment tight to the platform.
TBH not sure if we want to go there as it would mean a significant additional maintenance effort.

[amezin]

Hm, can't ensureIssue/ensureIssueClosing in dependency-dashboard.ts simply be skipped (just like when dryRun is set)?

[secustor]

You can simply turn off the dependencyDashboard, tough this will not give the desired approval workflow. https://docs.renovatebot.com/configuration-options/#dependencydashboard

[amezin]

If I'm running Renovate with a platform that doesn't support issues (Bitbucket Server), are approvals expected to work through checkedBranches?

With dependencyDashboard enabled but obviously not working.

[secustor]

Not sure TBH, I never had this scenario, but you could try to run with checkedBranches targeting the approval branches and overwriting dependencyDashboardApproval: null to remove the setting.