How to Manage Cross-Repo Dependency Updates With Renovate

A shared Renovate preset in one repo lets every other repo extend the same update policy, keeping dependency PRs consistent across a polyrepo.

Publish a base config in a central repo, then each repo extends it in renovate.json. Renovate opens update PRs everywhere using one set of rules you maintain in a single place.

Steps

Create a shared preset (for example renovate-config/default.json) in a central repo.
In each repo, add renovate.json that extends the shared preset.
Override only the repo-specific bits locally.

Shared preset

default.json

{
  "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  "extends": ["config:recommended"],
  "schedule": ["before 6am on monday"],
  "packageRules": [
    { "matchUpdateTypes": ["minor", "patch"], "automerge": true }
  ]
}

Per-repo config extending it

renovate.json

{
  "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  "extends": ["local>my-org/renovate-config"]
}

Gotchas

A change to the shared preset affects every repo that extends it, so version or review preset changes.
Group internal packages with packageRules so related bumps land in one PR per repo.