Renovate bot (or just Renovate) is a tool that automatically updates third-party dependencies declared in your Git repository via pull requests. This Renovate cheat sheet helps teams who adopt Renovate customize the most common (and useful) configuration options, without having to know the extensive Renovate documentation. Originally posted on 2021-07-25, updated on 2026-08-12. Introduction Renovate … Read more
Renovate bot is a tool that automatically updates software dependencies declared in your Git repository via pull requests. In this Renovate introduction, I explain the benefits of automated dependency updates, how Renovate works, how to operate/run Renovate yourself (if necessary), and how you can configure its behavior for each repository. Originally posted on 2021-07-11, updated … Read more
This article presents 17 common Git problems that can happen when working in Git, with recipes for how to recover from them. It is very common to accidentally make mistakes when working with Git. Maybe you created commits in the wrong branch, or your commit history has become a mess. Fortunately, almost everything can be … Read more
This Git guide is for software developers who already know the most basic Git commands. After reading it, you can confidently clean the past commit history with an interactive rebase, revert commits, reset branches, merge branches, force push, or recover orphaned commits. This guide only contains the most necessary bits, to avoid mental overload. Introduction … Read more
In this article I compare several approaches for running compliance checks, like validating Git commit messages with a regular expression, or linting your code. I explain how these checks can either run in your IDE, in a local pre-commit hook, a remote pre-receive Git hook, or as part of your CI pipeline. I compare these … Read more
This article explains how to achieve Continuous Deployment of Docker-based software, using either pull-based approaches (external tools such as watchtower and harbormaster), or push-based techniques (deployment from the CI/CD pipeline). I explain the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and also illustrate how automated testing greatly reduces the risk of unnoticed failed deployments. Introduction When … Read more
GitOps is a methodology for Continuous Deployment, where you use Git to store (and track changes of) a declarative definition of your deployment configuration, and have a GitOps tool apply this configuration to your (production, etc.) environment. In this GitOps introduction you will learn how GitOps is defined. By looking at several examples, you will … Read more
Git allows a repository to include other Git repositories as submodules. However, the submodules mechanism is complicating several workflows that are usually straightforward, like committing or checking out changes. This Git submodule tutorial explains the concept of submodules and helps you navigate the most important workflows. All steps and commands are demonstrated by example, using … Read more
Whenever you develop UNIX shell scripts on Microsoft Windows and commit them with Git, they lack the UNIX execute permission bit. When you check out the file with Git on a UNIX-based system, these scripts cannot be started, and the software breaks. This article explains how to set the execute permission bit on Windows, and … Read more