How to Version and Upgrade Templates With Renovate

Versioning templates and letting Renovate open upgrade PRs is how scaffolded repos keep pulling platform changes.

Tag your reusable workflows and actions, then configure Renovate to bump those references in every repo. Teams review a PR instead of the platform team hunting down stale copies.

Steps

• Tag reusable workflows and actions with semver.
• Add a renovate.json that watches GitHub Actions references.
• Renovate opens PRs bumping the pinned versions.
• Teams merge to pick up platform changes.

Renovate config

{
  "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  "extends": ["config:recommended"],
  "github-actions": {
    "enabled": true,
    "pinDigests": true
  },
  "packageRules": [
    { "matchManagers": ["github-actions"], "groupName": "platform actions" }
  ]
}

Gotchas

• Renovate updates references it can parse; pin actions and reusable workflows by version, not a floating branch.
• pinDigests swaps tags for SHAs, which is safer but produces noisier upgrade PRs.

Related guides