renovate-config-validator reports "INFO: Config validated successfully" when no config exists

[Konafets]

How are you running Renovate?

Mend Renovate hosted app on github.com

If you're self-hosting Renovate, tell us what version of Renovate you run.

32.83.2

Please select which platform you are using if self-hosting.

No response

If you're self-hosting Renovate, tell us what version of the platform you run.

No response

Was this something which used to work for you, and then stopped?

I never saw this working

Describe the bug

I wanted to recreate the on-boarding PR on Gitlab via PR. I did not merge the first onboarding PR, so I do not have any renovate related config file and since its a JAVA project, no package.json. But when I run renovate-config-validator it reports:

INFO: Config validated successfully

I expected either it tells me that there is no config file and/or offers to create one with basic settings.

Relevant debug logs

No response

Have you created a minimal reproduction repository?

No reproduction repository

[PhilipAbed]

• Hi, please elaborate, what do you mean by renovate-config-validator?
• and can you please send all debug logs?
• could this be related to the requireConfig?
• you mentioned recreate could it be that you still have some cached config?, or using a global one somehow?

i believe re-creating the on-boarding PR could be problematic on the app side with the same repository name cause of cache , maybe just add the renovate.json manually, or try changing the repository name it could be cached on the app side too. I'm not sure how to clean app cache, or how long does it take to refresh

[Konafets]

Hi,

I installed Renovate Bot app in Github.com and gave permissions to one repo. RB created the on-boarding PR. Beside that I had another PR, which already updated some of the dependencies, RB would like to update as well.

Here I read that I should rename the onboarding PR from "Configure Renovate" to "Configure Renovate - old" and wait that RB creates a new one. I did, but RB did not created a new one, so I keep searching and found these instructions https://docs.renovatebot.com/getting-started/installing-onboarding/#reconfigure-via-pr. I installed RB globally via NPM and executed renovate-config-validator with the hope that might help in terms to create an onboarding commit locally. To my surprise it told my that my configuration was validated successfully which is weird since I do not have a RB configuration file.

TLDR: The CLI app renovate-config-validator seems not to check if a configuration file exist in the current directory.

[github-actions[bot]]

Hi there,

Get your issue fixed faster by creating a minimal reproduction. This means a repository dedicated to reproducing this issue with the minimal dependencies and config possible.

Before we start working on your issue we need to know exactly what's causing the current behavior. A minimal reproduction helps us with this.

To get started, please read our guide on creating a minimal reproduction.

We may close the issue if you, or someone else, haven't created a minimal reproduction within two weeks. If you need more time, or are stuck, please ask for help or more time in a comment.

Good luck,

The Renovate team

[PhilipAbed]

i believe you should have this parameter, and thats where the config is found, RENOVATE_CONFIG_FILE

[PhilipAbed]

C:\tests\renovateTutorial>renovate-config-validator DEBUG: Using RE2 as regex engine DEBUG: Checking for config file in C:\tests\renovateTutorial/config.js DEBUG: No config file found on disk - skipping INFO: Config validated successfully

[rarkins]

So the question is: if no config file is found, then should we exit successfully or unsuccessfully?

[PhilipAbed]

@rarkins if the config file is not found we are just Merging the other default configs in, and the validation is successful anyway, But because we are running from the script it doesn't pass through the requireConfig check, we do that when Onboarding pr.. so its just OK to keep going in a real repo run, it's a script issue only

[Konafets]

Maybe you could add an additional info, that the current path does not contain a configuration file.

[PhilipAbed]

we might just need to add config.requireConfig=required and file not found => exit code "-1" with error message maybe

file.ts -> line 70

    } else {
      // istanbul ignore next: we can ignore this
      logger.debug('No config file found on disk - skipping');
      //---------------------------- we can add this, but i'm not sure it won't hurt any other flow :D
      if(config.requireConfig === "required"){
        logger.fatal('No Config File Found ');
        process.exit(1);
      }
    }

[rarkins]

I think it will always be true if there's no config

[rarkins]

Resolution: fail if no config file found at all

[HonkingGoose]

I'm re-opening this issue because we reverted the PR that closed this issue:

• 23815 (PR that was supposed to close this issue)

• 25861 (PR that reverts to known-good situation)

[viceice]

I think it should only fail if the strict flag is used