Customizing Dependabot pull requests to fit your processes

Learn how to tailor your Dependabot pull requests to better suit your own internal workflows.

Who can use this feature?

Users with write access

In this article

There are various ways to customize your Dependabot pull requests so that they better suit your own internal processes.

For example:

  • To maximize efficiency, Dependabot can automatically add specific individuals or teams as reviewers to its pull requests for a particular package ecosystem.
  • To integrate Dependabot's pull requests into your CI/CD pipelines, it can apply custom labels to pull requests, which you can then use to trigger action workflows.

There are several different customization options which can all be used in combination, and tailored per package ecosystem.

Automatically adding reviewers and assignees

By default, Dependabot raises pull requests without any reviewers or assignees.

However, you may want pull requests to be consistently reviewed or dealt with by a specific individual or team that has expertise in that package ecosystem, or automatically assigned to a designated security team. In which case, you can use reviewers and assignees to set these values per package ecosystem.

The example dependabot.yml file below changes the npm configuration so that all pull requests opened with version and security updates for npm have:

  • A team ("my-org/team-name") and an individual ("octocat") automatically added as reviewers to the pull requests.
  • An individual ("user-name") automatically assigned to the pull requests.
YAML
# `dependabot.yml` file with
# reviews and an assignee for all npm pull requests

version: 2
updates:
  # Keep npm dependencies up to date
  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    # Raise all npm pull requests with reviewers
    reviewers:
      - "my-org/team-name"
      - "octocat"
    # Raise all npm pull requests with assignees
    assignees:
      - "user-name"

Setting this option will also affect pull requests for security updates to the manifest files of this package manager, unless you use target-branch to check for version updates on a non-default branch.

See also assignees and reviewers.

Labeling pull requests with custom labels

By default, Dependabot raises all pull requests with the dependencies label.

If more than one package manager is defined, Dependabot includes an additional label on each pull request, which indicates which language or ecosystem the pull request updates. For example, adding java for Gradle updates, or submodules for git submodule updates.

Dependabot creates the default labels it applies to pull requests if they do not already exist in the repository. If you want to use custom labels, you need to create these yourself. For more information, see: Managing labels.

You can use labels to override the default labels and specify your own custom labels per package ecosystem. This is useful if, for example, you want to:

  • Use labels to assign a priority to certain pull requests.
  • Use labels to trigger another workflow, such as automatically adding the pull request onto a project board.

The example dependabot.yml file below changes the npm configuration so that all pull requests opened with version and security updates for npm have custom labels.

YAML
# `dependabot.yml` file with
# customized npm configuration

version: 2
updates:
  # Keep npm dependencies up to date
  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    # Raise all npm pull requests with custom labels
    labels:
      - "npm dependencies"
      - "triage-board"

Setting this option will also affect pull requests for security updates to the manifest files of this package manager, unless you use target-branch to check for version updates on a non-default branch.

See also labels.

Adding a prefix to commit messages

By default, Dependabot attempts to detect your commit message preferences and use similar patterns. In addition, Dependabot populates the titles of pull requests based on the commit messages.

You can specify your own prefix for Dependabot's commit messages (and pull request titles) for a specific package ecosystem. This can be useful if, for example, you're running automations that process commit messages or pull requests titles.

To specify your preferences explicitly, use commit-message together with the following supported options:

  • prefix:
    • Specifies a prefix for all commit messages.
    • Prefix is also added to the start of the pull request title.
  • prefix-development:
    • Specifies a separate prefix for all commit messages that update development dependencies, as defined by the package manager or ecosystem.
    • Supported for bundler, composer, mix, maven, npm, and pip.
  • include: "scope":
    • Specifies that any prefix is followed by the dependency types (deps or deps-dev) updated in the commit.

The example below shows several different options, tailored per package ecosystem:

YAML
# Customize commit messages

version: 2
updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    commit-message:
      # Prefix all commit messages with "npm: "
      prefix: "npm"

  - package-ecosystem: "docker"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    commit-message:
      # Prefix all commit messages with [docker] " (no colon, but a trailing whitespace)
      prefix: [docker] "

  - package-ecosystem: "composer"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    # Prefix all commit messages with "Composer" plus its scope, that is, a
    # list of updated dependencies
    commit-message:
      prefix: "Composer"
      include: "scope"

  - package-ecosystem: "pip"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    # Include a list of updated dependencies
    # with a prefix determined by the dependency group
    commit-message:
      prefix: "pip prod"
      prefix-development: "pip dev"

Setting this option will also affect pull requests for security updates to the manifest files of this package manager, unless you use target-branch to check for version updates on a non-default branch.

See also commit-message.

Associating pull requests with a milestone

Milestones help you track the progress of groups of pull requests (or issues) towards a project goal or release. With Dependabot, you can use the milestone option to associate pull requests for dependency updates with a specific milestone.

You must specify the numeric identifier of the milestone and not its label. To find the numeric identifier, check the final part of the page URL, after milestone. For example, for https://github.com/<org>/<repo>/milestone/3, "3" is the numeric identifier of the milestone.

YAML
# Specify a milestone for pull requests

version: 2
updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    # Associate pull requests with milestone "4"
    milestone: 4

Setting this option will also affect pull requests for security updates to the manifest files of this package manager, unless you use target-branch to check for version updates on a non-default branch.

See also milestones and About milestones.

Changing the separator in the pull request branch name

Dependabot generates a branch for each pull request. Each branch name includes dependabot, as well as the name of the package manager and the dependency to be updated. By default, these parts of the branch name are separated by a / symbol, for example:

  • dependabot/npm_and_yarn/next_js/acorn-6.4.1

To maintain supportability or consistency with your existing processes, you may need to ensure your branch names align with your team's existing conventions. In this case, you can use pull-request-branch-name.separator to specify a different separator, choosing either _, /, or "-".

In the below example, the npm configuration changes the default separator from / to "-", so that it would appear as such:

  • Default (/): dependabot/npm_and_yarn/next_js/acorn-6.4.1
  • Customized ("-"): dependabot-npm_and_yarn-next_js-acorn-6.4.1

Note that the hyphen symbol ("-") must be surrounded by quotation marks so that it's not interpreted as starting an empty YAML list.

YAML
# Specify a different separator for branch names

version: 2
updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    pull-request-branch-name:
      # Change the default separator (/) to a hyphen (-)
      separator: "-"

Setting this option will also affect pull requests for security updates to the manifest files of this package manager, unless you use target-branch to check for version updates on a non-default branch.

See also pull-request-branch-name.separator.

Targeting pull requests against a non-default branch

By default, Dependabot checks for manifest files on the default branch and raises pull requests for updates against the default branch.

Generally, it makes most sense to keep Dependabot's checks and updates on the default branch. However, there may be some cases where you may need to specify a different target branch. If, for example, your team's processes require you to first test and validate updates on a non-production branch, you can use target-branch to specify a different branch for Dependabot to raise pull requests against.

Note

Dependabot raises pull requests for security updates against the default branch only. If you use target-branch, then as a result, all configuration settings for that package manager will then only apply to version updates, and not security updates.

YAML
# Specify a non-default branch for pull requests for pip

version: 2
updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "pip"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
    # Raise pull requests for version updates
    # to pip against the `develop` branch
    target-branch: "develop"
    # Labels on pull requests for version updates only
    labels:
      - "pip dependencies"

  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"
      # Check for npm updates on Sundays
      day: "sunday"
    # Labels on pull requests for security and version updates
    labels:
      - "npm dependencies"

See also target-branch.