Setup Renovate for Forgejo in Docker container

Prerequisites

• A running Forgejo server

Setup Renovate

Create user for Renovate

Create a new Forgejo user (I called it renovate-bot)

Create a Access token for the user in Settings > Applications with the permissions:

activitypub	No access
admin	No access
issue	Read and write
misc	Read
notification	No access
organization	Read
package	No access
repository	Read and write
user	Read

Take note of the token as it will only be shown once

Setup docker compose

Create a folder at ./renovate/data owned by 12021:12021

mkdir -p ./renovate/data
chown -R 12021:12021 ./renovate/data

Create renovate config at ./renovate/config.yaml

gitAuthor: Renovate [bot] <[email protected]>
baseDir: /data
autodiscover: true
 
endpoint: https://git.example.com
platform: forgejo
token: [redacted]

services:
  renovate:
    # Change to the current version of renovate
    image: ghcr.io/renovatebot/renovate:43
    container_name: forgejo_renovate
    restart: no
    environment:
      RENOVATE_CONFIG_FILE: /config.yaml
    volumes:
      - ./renovate/config.yaml:/config.yaml:ro
      - ./renovate/data:/data

Setup a cron job to run renovate once a day

Edit your crontab using crontab -e and add:

0 0 * * * docker compose -f /path/to/docker-compose.yml up

Replace the path with the actual path of your compose file

Test your deployment by starting the container

docker compose -f /path/to/docker-compose.yml up

Usage

To use renovate in your repos, you’ll just have to add the renovate user to your repo with write permissions.

Sources

https://tech-tales.blog/en/posts/2025/renovate-deployment/