bundle_update_interactive

This gem adds an update-interactive command to Bundler. Run it to see what gems can be updated, then pick and choose which ones to update. If you've used yarn upgrade-interactive, the interface should be very familiar.

• Quick start
• Options
• Features
• Prior art
• Support
• License
• Code of conduct
• Contribution guide

Quick start

Install the gem:

gem install bundle_update_interactive

Now you can use:

bundle update-interactive

Or the shorthand:

bundle ui

Options

• --latest modifies the Gemfile if necessary to allow the latest gem versions
• -D / --exclusively=GROUP limits updatable gems by Gemfile groups

Features

Semver highlighting

bundle update-interactive highlights each gem according the severity of its version upgrade.

Gems sourced from Git repositories are highlighted in cyan, regardless of the semver change, due to the fact that new commits pulled from the Git repo may not yet be officially released. In this case the semver information is unknown.

bundle update-interactive also highlights the exact portion of the version number that has changed, so you can quickly scan gem versions for important differences.

Security vulnerabilities

bundle update-interactive uses bundler-audit internally to search for outdated gems that have known security vulnerabilities. These gems are highlighted prominently with white text on a red background.

Some gems, notably rails, are composed of smaller gems like actionpack, activesupport, railties, etc. Because of how these component gem versions are constrained, you cannot update just one of them; they all must be updated together.

Therefore, if any Rails component has a security vulnerability, bundle update-interactive will automatically roll up that information into a single rails line item, so you can select it and upgrade all of its components in one shot.

Held back gems

When a newer version of a gem is available, but updating is not allowed due to a Gemfile requirement, update-interactive will report that the gem has been held back.

To allow updates for gems that would normally be held back, use the --latest option (explained in the next section).

Allow latest versions

Normally update-interactive only makes changes to your Gemfile.lock. It honors the version restrictions ("pins") in your Gemfile and will not update your Gemfile.lock to have versions that are not allowed. However with the --latest flag, update-interactive can update the version pins in your Gemfile as well. Consider the following Gemfile:

gem "rails", "~> 7.1.0"

Normally running bundle update-interactive will report that Rails is held back and therefore cannot be updated to the latest version. However, if you pass the --latest option like this:

bundle update-interactive --latest

Now Rails will be allowed to update. If you select to update Rails to the latest version (e.g. 7.2.0), update-interactive will modify the version requirement in your Gemfile to look like this:

gem "rails", "~> 7.2.0"

In other words, it works similarly to yarn upgrade-interactive --latest.

Changelogs

bundle update-interactive will do its best to find an appropriate changelog for each gem.

It prefers the changelog_uri metadata published in the gem itself. However, this metadata field is optional, and many gem authors do not provide it.

As a fallback, bundle update-interactive will check if the gem's source code is hosted on GitHub, and scans the GitHub repo for obvious changelog files like CHANGELOG.md, NEWS, etc. Finally, if the project is actively documenting versions using GitHub Releases, the Releases URL will be used.

If you discover a gem that is missing a changelog in bundle update-interactive, log an issue and I'll see if the algorithm can be improved.

Git diffs

If your Gemfile sources a gem from a Git repo like this:

gem "rails", github: "rails/rails", branch: "7-1-stable"

Then bundle update-interactive will show a diff link instead of a changelog, so you can see exactly what changed when the gem is updated. For example:

https://github.com/rails/rails/compare/5a8d894...77dfa65

This feature currently works for GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket repos.

Limit impact by Gemfile groups

The effects of bundle update-interactive can be limited to one or more Gemfile groups using the --exclusively option:

bundle update-interactive --exclusively=group1,group2

This is especially useful when you want to safely update a subset of your lock file without introducing any risk to your application in production. The best way to do this is with --exclusively=development,test, which can be abbreviated to simply -D:

# Update non-production dependencies.
# This is equivalent to `bundle update-interactive --exclusively=development,test`
bundle update-interactive -D

The --exclusively and -D options will cause update-interactive to only consider gems that are used exclusively by the specified Gemfile groups. Indirect dependencies that are shared with other Gemfile groups will not be updated.

For example, given this Gemfile:

gem "rails"

group :test do
  gem "capybara"
end

If --exclusively=test is used, capybara and its indirect dependency xpath are both exclusively used in test and can therefore be updated. However, capybara's nokogiri indirect dependency, which is also used in production via rails → actionpack → nokogiri, would not be allowed to update.

Conservative updates

bundle update-interactive updates the gems you select by running bundle update --conservative [GEMS...]. This means that only those specific gems will be updated. Indirect dependencies shared with other gems will not be affected.

An exception is made for "meta gems" like rails that are composed of dependencies locked at exact versions. For example, if you chose to upgrade rails, the actual command issued to Bundler will be:

bundle update --conservative \
  rails \
  actioncable \
  actionmailbox \
  actionmailer \
  actionpack \
  actiontext \
  actionview \
  activejob \
  activemodel \
  activerecord \
  activestorage \
  activesupport \
  railties

Prior art

This project was inspired by yarn upgrade-interactive, and borrows many of its interface ideas.

Before creating bundle update-interactive, I published bundleup, a gem that serves a similar purpose but with a simpler, non-interactive approach.

Support

If you want to report a bug, or have ideas, feedback or questions about the gem, let me know via GitHub issues and I will do my best to provide a helpful answer. Happy hacking!

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of conduct

Everyone interacting in this project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.

Contribution guide

Pull requests are welcome!

To test your locally cloned version of bundle update-interactive, run rake install. This will install the gem and its executable so that you can try it out on other local projects.

Before submitting a PR, make sure to run rake to see if there are any RuboCop or test failures.