Seamless Quarkus Dependency Updates with Renovate, OpenRewrite & Red Hat DevSpaces

Our strategy is built around a convention-driven Git branch naming scheme and an automated upgrade pipeline. Renovate detects outdated dependencies and creates well-structured update branches, following this pattern:

renovate/<dependency_name>_<current_version>_<new_version>

To automate Quarkus dependency tracking, we configure Renovate with a structured branch naming pattern. Our renovate-config.js file looks like this:

module.exports = {
    gitAuthor: 'Renovate Bot <bot@renovateapp.com>',
    platform: 'github',
    repositories: [
        "Gepardec/renovate-playground" // our quarkus service
    ],
    separateMajorMinor: false, // Group minor and major updates together
    packageRules: [
        {
            matchPackagePrefixes: ["io.quarkus"], // Target only Quarkus dependencies
            groupName: "quarkus",
            groupSlug: "quarkus_{{currentVersion}}_{{newVersion}}" // Use a custom naming pattern for the branch name
        },
    ]
}

Once Renovate creates an update branch, we trigger a GitHub Action that:

1. Parses the branch name to extract metadata.

2. Runs OpenRewrite via mvn quarkus:update for automated code transformations.

3. Executes builds and tests to validate the upgrade.

4. Creates a conflict-free pull request with all necessary changes.

Parsing the Branch Name

To extract the dependency name, current version, and new version from the branch name:

- name: Parse branch name
  id: parse
  env:
  	BRANCH: ${{ github.head_ref }}
  run: |
   	echo "DEPNAME=$(echo $BRANCH | cut -d'/' -f2 | cut -d'_' -f1)"     
echo "CURR_VERSION=$(echo $BRANCH | cut -d'/' -f2 | cut -d'_' -f2)"     
echo "NEW_VERSION=$(echo $BRANCH | cut -d'/' -f2 | cut -d'_' -f3)"

Checking Out the Main Branch

Since Renovate already updated the version in its branch, we need to check out the main branch to retrieve the old version:

- uses: actions/checkout@v3
  name: checkout
  with:
  	ref: main

We need to do this because mvn quarkus:update uses the defined version in pom.xml and would otherwise do nothing, as Renovate already set it to the newest version.

Executing the Quarkus Upgrade Command

- name: Upgrade Quarkus Version
  env:
  	NEW_VERSION: ${{ steps.parse.outputs.NEW_VERSION }}
  run: |
  	./mvnw io.quarkus.platform:quarkus-maven-plugin:${NEW_VERSION}:update

Creating a New Pull Request

To ensure a smooth integration, we create a separate branch and generate a pull request:

- name: Create Pull Request
  uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v6
  with:
  	token: ${{ secrets.RENOVATE_TOKEN }}
       title: Upgrade quarkus from ${{ steps.parse.outputs.CURR_VERSION }} to ${{ steps.parse.outputs.NEW_VERSION }}
       branch: postupgradetask/${{ steps.parse.outputs.DEPNAME }}_${{ steps.parse.outputs.CURR_VERSION }}_${{ steps.parse.outputs.NEW_VERSION }}
       base: main
       committer: github-actions[bot] 
       author: ${{ github.actor }} <${{ github.actor_id }}+${{ github.actor }}@users.noreply.github.com>
       body: |
       	Upgrade quarkus version

If the build validation fails, we automatically add a Red Hat DevSpaces link to the pull request, allowing developers to debug in an isolated environment:

- name: Add DevSpaces Link on Failure
  if: failure()
 	run: |
       echo "Build failed. Debug the issue using DevSpace: [DevSpace Link](https://devspace.example.com)" >> pr_comment.md
       gh pr comment ${{ github.event.pull_request.number }} --body-file pr_comment.md