Semantic Renovate diffs with `renovate-packagedata-diff`

By using the renovate-packagedata-diff command, you can get semantic differences between Renovate data exports.

This works for any of the sources of Renovate data that dependency-management-data supports, aside from:

Renovate's Reports exports - see the tracking issue for more details.

This allows you to replace an awkward diff of JSON exports like:

With a much more human-readable diff, when you wire in renovate-packagedata-diff:

Notice that we get an actually human-readable TL;DR of what's changed in a given update.

To have this enable by default with your local Git config, add the following to .git/config:

[diff "renovate-packagedata-diff"]
command = renovate-packagedata-diff

And then add the below to your .gitattributes, assuming your Renovate data exports are in renovate/ in the repository you have set up:

renovate/*.json diff=renovate-packagedata-diff

Known issues:

Multiple versions of the same package in a given file can confuse the diffs https://gitlab.com/tanna.dev/dependency-management-data/-/issues/626

JSON Output

Since dependency-management-data v0.113.0, it is possible to produce JSON output from renovate-packagedata-diff, for instance:

{
  "notes": [],
  "additions": [
    {
      "packageName": "croner",
      "packageType": "npm",
      "version": "9.0.0",
      "currentVersion": "9.0.0",
      "digest": null,
      "depTypes": [
        "dependencies"
      ],
      "packageFilePath": "package.json"
    }
  ],
  "modification": [
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "9.9.2-full",
        "currentVersion": "9.9.2-full",
        "digest": "sha256:73e6778a296f738f3319ae21493b8d09d85cc5d96d584dc1f8131ed697b5a375",
        "depTypes": [
          "stage"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "tools/docker/Dockerfile"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "9.14.1-full",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.1-full",
        "digest": "sha256:677fb390a315a28a517394f4ee34cc9827da17bd4a854461c293b94a521f8f10"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "9.9.2-full",
        "currentVersion": "9.9.2-full",
        "digest": "sha256:73e6778a296f738f3319ae21493b8d09d85cc5d96d584dc1f8131ed697b5a375",
        "depTypes": [
          "stage"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "tools/docker/Dockerfile"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "9.14.1",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.1",
        "digest": "sha256:681641f310b63c5f1187df97b94bb6ddde280a00667624e0364b92dface942c1"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "9.9.2",
        "currentVersion": "9.9.2",
        "digest": "sha256:bda9fce19989b0286e796f8eb89d20f776fe7826de3009b6820ec61003cc4ca3",
        "depTypes": [
          "final"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "tools/docker/Dockerfile"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "9.14.1",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.1",
        "digest": "sha256:681641f310b63c5f1187df97b94bb6ddde280a00667624e0364b92dface942c1"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "9.9.2",
        "currentVersion": "9.9.2",
        "digest": "sha256:bda9fce19989b0286e796f8eb89d20f776fe7826de3009b6820ec61003cc4ca3",
        "depTypes": [
          "stage"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "tools/docker/Dockerfile"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "9.14.1-full",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.1-full",
        "digest": "sha256:677fb390a315a28a517394f4ee34cc9827da17bd4a854461c293b94a521f8f10"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "9.9.2",
        "currentVersion": "9.9.2",
        "digest": "sha256:bda9fce19989b0286e796f8eb89d20f776fe7826de3009b6820ec61003cc4ca3",
        "depTypes": [
          "stage"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "tools/docker/Dockerfile"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "9.14.1",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.1",
        "digest": "sha256:681641f310b63c5f1187df97b94bb6ddde280a00667624e0364b92dface942c1"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "pnpm",
        "packageType": "npm",
        "version": "9.13.0",
        "currentVersion": "9.13.0",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [
          "packageManager"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "package.json"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "9.14.2",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.2"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "pnpm",
        "packageType": "npm",
        "version": "9.13.0",
        "currentVersion": "9.13.0",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [
          "volta"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "package.json"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "9.14.2",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.2"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "pnpm",
        "packageType": "npm",
        "version": "^9.0.0",
        "currentVersion": "9.14.2",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [
          "engines"
        ],
        "packageFilePath": "package.json"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "currentVersion": "9.14.4"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "renovate/renovate",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "39.19.1",
        "currentVersion": "39.19.1",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [],
        "packageFilePath": "docs/usage/examples/self-hosting.md"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "39.42.4",
        "currentVersion": "39.42.4"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "renovate/renovate",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "39.19.1",
        "currentVersion": "39.19.1",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [],
        "packageFilePath": "docs/usage/examples/self-hosting.md"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "39.42",
        "currentVersion": "39.42"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "renovate/renovate",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "39.19",
        "currentVersion": "39.19",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [],
        "packageFilePath": "docs/usage/examples/self-hosting.md"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "39.42.4",
        "currentVersion": "39.42.4"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "renovate/renovate",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "39.19",
        "currentVersion": "39.19",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [],
        "packageFilePath": "docs/usage/examples/self-hosting.md"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "39.42",
        "currentVersion": "39.42"
      }
    },
    {
      "previousDependency": {
        "packageName": "renovate/renovate",
        "packageType": "docker",
        "version": "39",
        "currentVersion": "39",
        "digest": null,
        "depTypes": [],
        "packageFilePath": "docs/usage/examples/self-hosting.md"
      },
      "diffs": {
        "version": "39.42",
        "currentVersion": "39.42"
      }
    }
  ],
  "deletion": [
    {
      "packageName": "cron-parser",
      "packageType": "npm",
      "version": "4.9.0",
      "currentVersion": "4.9.0",
      "digest": null,
      "depTypes": [
        "dependencies"
      ],
      "packageFilePath": "package.json"
    }
  ],
  "isNew": false,
  "isDeletion": false
}

This JSON output is generated in the format defined by the JSON Schema in renovate-packagedata-diff-schema.json.