dependabot azure devops

Tools for updating dependencies in Azure DevOps repositories using https://dependabot.com

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Dependabot for Azure DevOps

This repository contains tools for updating dependencies in Azure DevOps repositories using Dependabot.

Extensions
Server
Release
license

In this repository you’ll find:

  1. Azure DevOps Extension, source code and docs.
  2. Dependabot Server, source code and docs.

Table of Contents

Getting started

[!WARNING]
It is strongly recommended that you complete (or abandon) all active pull requests created by the same user that were created manually or using earlier versions of the task.

Dependabot for Azure DevOps must be explicitly configured to run in your organisation; creating a dependabot.yml file alone is not enough to enable updates. There are two ways to enable Dependabot, using:

  • Azure DevOps Extension - Ideal if you want to get Dependabot running with minimal administrative effort. The extension can run directly inside your existing pipeline agents and doesn’t require hosting of any additional services. Because the extension runs in pipelines, this option does not scale well if you have a large number of projects and repositories.

    Example: 
    trigger: none # Disable CI trigger

schedules:
  - cron: '0 0 * * 0' # weekly on sunday at midnight UTC
    always: true # run even when there are no code changes
    branches:
      include:
        - master
    batch: true
    displayName: Weekly

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest' # requires macos or ubuntu (windows is not supported)

# Uncomment the lines below to have secrets protected in the logs
# variables:
#  System.Secrets: true

steps:
  - task: dependabot@2
    inputs:
      mergeStrategy: 'squash'

    See task requirements and task parameters for more information.

  • Hosted Server - Ideal if you have a large number of projects and repositories or prefer to run Dependabot as a managed service instead of using pipeline agents. See why should I use the server? for more info.

Other Guides

You can also read guides written by others:

If you have written a good piece, you can share it then we can add it here.

Using a configuration file

Similar to the GitHub-hosted version, Dependabot is configured using a dependabot.yml file located at .azuredevops/dependabot.yml or .github/dependabot.yml in your repository.

Most official configuration options are supported; See unsupported features and configurations for more details.

Configuring private feeds and registries

Besides accessing the repository, sometimes private feeds/registries may need to be accessed. For example a private NuGet feed or a company internal docker registry.

Private registries are configured in dependabot.yml, refer to the official documentation.

Example: 
version: 2
registries:
  # Azure DevOps private feed, all views
  my-analyzers:
    type: nuget-feed
    url: https://dev.azure.com/organization2/_packaging/my-analyzers/nuget/v3/index.json
    token: PAT:${{ MY_DEPENDABOT_ADO_PAT }}

  # Azure DevOps private feed, "Release" view only
  my-Extern@Release:
    type: nuget-feed
    url: https://dev.azure.com/organization1/_packaging/my-Extern@Release/nuget/v3/index.json
    token: PAT:${{ MY_DEPENDABOT_ADO_PAT }}

  # Artifactory private feed using PAT
  artifactory:
    type: nuget-feed
    url: https://artifactory.com/api/nuget/v3/myfeed
    token: PAT:${{ MY_DEPENDABOT_ARTIFACTORY_PAT }}

  # Other private feed using basic auth (username/password)
  telerik:
    type: nuget-feed
    url: https://nuget.telerik.com/v3/index.json
    username: ${{ MY_TELERIK_USERNAME }}
    password: ${{ MY_TELERIK_PASSWORD }}
    token: ${{ MY_TELERIK_USERNAME }}:${{ MY_TELERIK_PASSWORD }}

updates:
  # ...

Note when using authentication secrets in configuration files:

[!IMPORTANT]
The ${{ VARIABLE_NAME }} notation is used liked described here BUT the values will be used from pipeline environment variables. Template variables are not supported for this replacement. Replacement only works for values considered secret in the registries section i.e. username, password, token, and key

When using an Azure DevOps Artifact feed, the token format must be PAT:${{ VARIABLE_NAME }} where VARIABLE_NAME is a pipeline/environment variable containing the PAT token. The PAT must:

  1. Have Packaging (Read) permission.
  2. Be issued by a user with permission to the feed either directly or via a group. An easy way for this is to give Contributor permissions the [{project_name}]\Contributors group under the Feed Settings -> Permissions page. The page has the url format: https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_packaging?_a=settings&feed={feed-name}&view=permissions.

Configuring security advisories and known vulnerabilities

Security-only updates (i.e. open-pull-requests-limit: 0) is a mechanism to only create pull requests for dependencies with vulnerabilities by updating them to the earliest available non-vulnerable version. Security updates are supported in the same way as the GitHub-hosted version provided that a GitHub access token with public_repo access is provided in the gitHubAccessToken or gitHubConnection task inputs.

Security-only updates incur a slight performance overhead due to limitations in Dependabot CLI, detailed in dependabot/cli#360. To work around this, vulnerable dependencies will first be discovered using an “ignore everything” update job; After which, security advisories for the discovered dependencies will be checked against the GitHub Advisory Database before finally performing the requested security-only update job.

You can provide extra security advisories, such as those for an internal dependency, in a JSON file via the securityAdvisoriesFile task input e.g. securityAdvisoriesFile: '$(Pipeline.Workspace)/advisories.json'. An example file is available in ./advisories-example.json.

Configuring experiments

Dependabot uses an internal feature flag system called “experiments”. Typically, experiments represent new features or changes in logic which are still being internally tested before becoming generally available. In some cases, you may want to opt-in to experiments to work around known issues or to opt-in to preview features ahead of general availability (GA).

Experiments vary depending on the package ecosystem used; They can be enabled using the experiments task input with a comma-separated list of key/value pairs representing the experiments e.g. experiments: 'tidy=true,vendor=true,goprivate=*'.

By default, the enabled experiments will mirror the GitHub-hosted version of Dependabot, which can be found here. Specifying experiments in the task input parameters will override all defaults.

[!NOTE]
Dependabot experiment names are not [publicly] documented and these may be out-of-date at the time of reading. To find the latest list of experiments, search the dependabot-core GitHub repository using queries like “enabled?(x)” and “options.fetch(x)”.

Configuring assignees

Dependabot supports assignees. However, Azure DevOps does not have the concept of pull request assignees. To work around this assignees are treated as required pull request reviewers.

The following values can be used as assignees:

  • User GUID
  • User username
  • User email address
  • User full display name
  • Group name
  • Team name

Unsupported features and configurations

We aim to support all official configuration options, but there are some limitations:

Dependabot Task

dependabot@2

dependabot@1

No longer functional.

Dependabot Server

Contributing

👋 Want to give us feedback on Dependabot for Azure DevOps, or contribute to it? That’s great - thank you so much!

Reporting issues and feature requests

Please leave all issues, bugs, and feature requests on the issues page. We’ll respond ASAP!
Use the discussions page for all other questions and comments.

Submitting pull requests

Please refer to the contributing guidelines for more information on how to get started.