How to setup Renovate Bot to update n8n to last stable release?

Questions
1

Hey there!

I’m using Renovate Bot to manage my dependencies, but I’m running into an issue with n8n’s Docker images.

n8n doesn’t separate pre-releases from stable versions in their Docker tags, so Renovate Bot always tries to update to the latest version number (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH). Unfortunately, this is always a pre-release (next) rather than the stable latest tag.

I’ve opened a discussion on the Renovate Bot repository, but the suggested workaround isn’t working properly.

There’s an ongoing conversation about changing n8n’s versioning, but no updates have been made since its creation in April 2023.

In the meantime, I’m writing this post to help the community find a reliable workaround using some specific Renovate Bot configuration options while we wait for the n8n team to adjust their Docker image tags.

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: 1.80.4
  • Database (default: SQLite): PostgreSQL
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main): main
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): Docker
  • Operating system: Linux
1 Like
2

Hello, do you have any log with error´s ?
Thanks.

3

The issue isn’t an error per se but comes from two key limitations:

  1. Docker API v2 Limitations
    The Docker API v2 doesn’t expose which tag is associated with latest, meaning we can’t use a configuration like followTag, as we would for an npm package.
  2. n8n’s Pre-Release Tagging
    n8n publishes pre-releases under the next tag, but their versioning follows the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format instead of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-beta. Because of this, Renovate (and similar tools) compare versions but struggle to differentiate stable releases from pre-releases due to the Docker API limitations and the lack of a suffix. As a result, Renovate incorrectly detects a new update in latest when it’s actually just a new pre-release.

This makes it difficult to configure Renovate to reliably track only stable releases.

4

In this case lets wait for the n8n team to adjust their Docker image tags
and try. Sorry , if i will have other informations i will write. Thanks

1 Like
5

Yup no problem, thanks for the input !

If you find a workaround using Renovate Bot configuration, don’t hesitate to share it with the community here. I tried something here without success, but one could fork it and try something else !

6

ok, thank you very much.

7

Got told by mail to up the topic, so here’s a message :eyes:

8

Hey guys,

Is there an update to this issue?
I tried several several workarounds, but none of them have been working so far. I also had a quick chat with some other experienced DevOps Engineers. I was told that n8n is not following the best practise to differentiate within the versioning here (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH-beta instead of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH).
That perfectly matches what @Gentleman9914 already described. What be nice for an automation tool, if also the deployment process could be fully automated without having to risk outages in the production environment :confused:

1 Like
9

The current best way to approach the automated version bump approach would be to use the latest tag with a digest pining. (Renovate bot best-practices set of settings).

You won’t be able to see directly from which version is it going to, but it would at least prove usefull in following the stable release. You would only need to check the sha digest to see the version refered to. (Might be automated in a pipeline ?)