README.md

greenkeeper-keeper

greenkeeper-keeper is a service to automatically merge passing greenkeeper PRs

Motivation

Greenkeeper is a fantastic service that makes it easy to keep dependencies up to date. However, it can get a bit noisy and create quite a few PRs. Hence, the birth of greenkeeper-keeper.

To help you keep up with all of that activity, greenkeeper-keeper can automatically accept PRs from greenkeeper as long as all of your commit status checks pass.

Designed to help, not take over

greenkeeper-keeper is limited to handling only PRs from greenkeeper. It will not attempt to accept PRs from other sources.

It will only accept PRs that have passing commit status checks. If any checks fail, greenkeeper-keeper will comment on the PR to inform you that it could not accept the PR and will let you take care of resolving the problem.

Setting up your own instance

Things you will need

• A GitHub account with access to the repositories for which you want greenkeeper PRs automatically accepted. A "bot" account is recommended.
• A personal access token for the account above with the repo and repo:read_hooks scopes. This token should be separate from any other tasks that the bot account is used for so that it is dedicated only to the greenkeeper-keeper service.
• A greenkeeper-keeper server instance (Be sure to provide the required configuration in the format for the option that you choose)
• Webhooks need to be configured for each repository for which you want greenkeeper-keeper to handle greenkeeper PRs.

Instance deployment options

• Include the hapi-plugin in your own hapi server. This is the recommended option because it is the simplest way for you to configure your instance to keep itself up to date.
• Deploy the reference instance directly to your chosen host, like Heroku or Now.
• A prebuilt Docker image is available on Docker Hub under greenkeeperkeeper/reference-instance

Setting up webhooks

Once your service is up and running, you will want to set up webhooks for the repositories you want greenkeeper-keeper to manage.

• Set the url to <url for your deployed greenkeeper-keeper instance>/payload (don't forget the /payload)

• Choose application/json for Content type instead of the default of application/x-www-form-encoded

• Select the Statuses and Check runs events when enabling the webhook. PRs are merged almost immediately after all of the checks have reported success.

  ⚠️ However, since greenkeeper waits for status updates on the branch before opening the PR, it is possible that no events will fire after the PR is opened if your CI server does not run an additional build specifically for the PR. Circle CI appears to be in the category of services that does not have the additional build. If you happen to use a CI server that acts this way, please open an issue and help us determine an appropriate approach to handling this situation.