---
title: Config Validation
description: How to validate Renovate's configuration.
---

# Config Validation

You can check your Renovate configuration with a standalone program called `renovate-config-validator`.
All [`renovate` distributions](getting-started/running.md#available-distributions) include this program.

## Default behavior

When you run `renovate-config-validator` with no arguments it will check:

- all [default locations](configuration-options.md) (if files exist)
- the `RENOVATE_CONFIG_FILE` environment variable

For example:

```console
$ npx --yes --package renovate -- renovate-config-validator
 INFO: Validating renovate.json
 INFO: Config validated successfully
```

If you want to run `renovate-config-validator` while using a custom filename for your renovate config file, you will need to pass the filename as cli argument.

### Strict mode

By default, the validator program fails with a non-zero exit code if there are any validation warnings or errors.
You can pass the `--strict` flag to make it fail if a scanned config needs migration:

```console title="Strict mode validation"
$ npx --yes --package renovate -- renovate-config-validator --strict
 INFO: Validating renovate.json
 WARN: Config migration necessary
       "oldConfig": {
         "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
         "extends": [ "config:base" ]
       },
       "newConfig": {
         "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
         "extends": [ "config:recommended" ]
       },
```

### Pass file to check as CLI arguments

You can pass the file you want to check to the `renovate-config-validator` program with a CLI argument.
This can be handy to check a config file with a non-default name, like when you're using preset repositories.
For example:

```console
$ npx --yes --package renovate -- renovate-config-validator first_config.json
 INFO: Validating first_config_.json
 INFO: Config validated successfully
```

!!! note
  If you specify the filename, `renovate-config-validator` treats the file(s) as global self-hosted configuration instead of repo-level configuration.
  If this isn't intentional - for instance if you're validating a [shared config preset](./config-presets.md) or a non-standard filename - make sure you specify `--no-global`, i.e. `renovate-config-validator --no-global go-presets.json`.

### Providing global configuration

If `renovate-config-validator` detects a `config.js`, or any [global self-hosed environment variables](./self-hosted-configuration.md), they will be set as global configuration.

For instance, if you had a `config.js`:

```javascript
module.exports = {
  // to mirror the Mend-hosted Renovate
  globalExtends: ['global:safeEnv'],
};
```

And a `renovate.json`:

```json
{
  "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  "env": {
    "GONOSUMDB": "off"
  }
}
```

The `renovate-config-validator` would allow this to pass.

## Validate your config automatically

You can create a [pre-commit](https://pre-commit.com) hook to validate your configuration automatically.
Go to the [`renovatebot/pre-commit-hooks` repository](https://github.com/renovatebot/pre-commit-hooks) for more information.

### Validation of Renovate config change PRs

!!! tip
  Using the Mend-hosted apps? Push a branch to `renovate/reconfigure` for feedback (via status check), and if there's a PR, Renovate will add comments to it!

Renovate can validate configuration changes in Pull Requests when you use a special branch name.

Follow these steps to validate your configuration:

1. Create a new Git branch that matches the `{{branchPrefix}}reconfigure` pattern. For example, if you're using the default prefix `renovate/`, your branch name must be `renovate/reconfigure`.
1. Commit your updated Renovate config file to this branch, and push it to your Git hosting platform.

The next time Renovate runs on that repo it will:

1. Search for a branch that matches the special reconfigure pattern.
1. Check for a config file in the reconfigure branch. Renovate can even find a renamed configuration file (compared to the config file in the default branch).
1. Add a passing or failing status to the branch, depending on the outcome of the config validation run.
1. If there's an _open_ pull request with validation errors from the _reconfigure_ branch then Renovate comments in the PR with details.
1. Validate each commit the next time Renovate runs on the repository, until the PR is merged.

!!! note
  The reconfigure branch **must** be pushed to the source repository that Renovate runs against, not a fork.