Misisng release notes when no sourceUrl known

[syphernl]

The problem

We have a number repositories on our GitLab, a mix of public and private, and use semantic-release to release them.
This creates a tag + release and adds the changelog in the description field of the release.

For our self-hosted dependencies (which are generally public repos) the release notes are not being included in the MR renovate creates.

Examples

Publicly hosted Helm Chart

Here the package is clickable and the release notes were pulled in.
This is an externally hosted dependency. The repo does not have a CHANGELOG.md so Renovate likely pulled in the description of the release (from GitHub)

The release notes were pulled in and are shown in the MR.

Privately hosted Helm chart

This is one of our Helm Charts we host on GitLab. The repo of the dependency is public.
It does not contain a CHANGELOG.md but the release on GitLab does include the releasenotes for this version.
This is basically the same setup as the public Prometheus Helm Chart (no CHANGELOG.md but releasenotes inside the release itself)

I would have expected Renovate to obtain the information from the release and add it to the MR.

Details from the release in question:

Background info

Some of these updates are detected by flux, others by regex.

[github-actions[bot]]

Hi there,

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[rarkins]

Can you create a reproduction repo (we prefer on github.com even if it's not a realistic scenario here) where there's a PR upgrading semantic-release/gitlab and with "missing" release notes?

[syphernl]

I have updated the title and body of the discussion.

Running Renovate in TRACE shows the URL's used:

❯ grep "HTTP URL statistics" renovate.log -A10000 | grep gitlab.com
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm/stable/index.yaml": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/LOCAL_REPO": {"GET": {"200": 1}},
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/LOCAL_REPO/issues": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/LOCAL_REPO/merge_requests": {
         "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/LOCAL_REPO/repository/files/.gitlab%2Frenovate.json": {
         "https://gitlab.com/jwt/auth": {"GET": {"200": 2}},
         "https://registry.gitlab.com/v2/": {"GET": {"401": 1}},
         "https://registry.gitlab.com/v2/some-docker-project/blobs/sha256:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx": {
         "https://registry.gitlab.com/v2/some-docker-project/manifests/latest": {
         "https://registry.gitlab.com/v2/some-docker-project/tags/list": {
         "https://registry.gitlab.com/v2/LOCAL_REPO/blobs/sha256:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx": {
         "https://registry.gitlab.com/v2/LOCAL_REPO/manifests/2.1.1": {
         "https://registry.gitlab.com/v2/LOCAL_REPO/tags/list": {

LOCAL_REPO is the repo that Renovate operated on in this run.
Not sure if this is expected behavior, but I would have expected it would use the version from the Helm index file, look up the release using the releases API and use the details from there.

An example of the contents of one of these Helm index.yaml files. This is something GitLab generates automatically within their Package Registry.

---
apiVersion: v1
entries:
  limesurvey:
  - name: limesurvey
    type: application
    version: 1.0.0
    apiVersion: v2
    appVersion: 1.0.0
    description: A Helm chart for deploying limesurvey
    created: '2024-11-13T14:18:32.192846000Z'
    digest:
    urls:
    - charts/limesurvey-1.0.0.tgz
  - name: limesurvey
    type: application
    version: 0.1.0
    apiVersion: v2
    description: A Helm chart for deploying limesurvey
    created: '2024-04-29T13:25:54.346223000Z'
    digest:
    urls:
    - charts/limesurvey-0.1.0.tgz
generated: '2024-11-19T14:56:25.886089806Z'
serverInfo:
  contextPath: "/api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/packages/helm"

[viceice]

your issue is that this helm repo yaml file doesn't contain any url pointing to the source repo, so renovate doesn't know how to search for release notes.

the versions are found inside that yaml, so renovate can suggest updates.

[syphernl]

your issue is that this helm repo yaml file doesn't contain any url pointing to the source repo, so renovate doesn't know how to search for release notes.

the versions are found inside that yaml, so renovate can suggest updates.

That explains how it finds the updates but not the actual release details.

In such cases Renovate could use the contextPath of the Helm indexfile generated by GitLab to determine the project's API base URL and retrieve the information for the release in the version key, e.g. /api/v4/projects/xxxxxxxx/releases/${version}. That way, the release notes could be obtained, or it could be used similarly to get the project's source URL instead if that route makes more sense.

[viceice]

that's not a standard helm repo field and our helm chart datasource doesn't support that.

you should add urls to the Chart.yaml and see if gitlab is exposing them. otherwise search for open issues on gitlab issue tracker.

you can set sourceUrl via package rules as workaround.

https://docs.renovatebot.com/configuration-options/#sourceurl

[syphernl]

Thank you @viceice!

Adding a sources key to our Chart.yaml was the solution. Luckily GitLab picks that up and uses it in their generated index. Renovate now properly picks up the release notes.

[rarkins]

I think we're blocked unless you're able to reproduce this on gitlab.com in a way which lets us inspect/debug it.