feat: apply group settings when only one update is present

[felipecrs]

Changes

By default, Renovate titles PRs after the individual dependency when a group contains only a single update.

This PR adds a new configuration option, groupSingleUpdates, that allows users to choose whether Renovate should always title PRs after the group, even when the group contains only a single update.

Discussed and proposed in #25588 (comment). Note I chose a different option name than the one proposed in the discussion, as I think this name is more descriptive of the behavior it controls.

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[RahulGautamSingh]

needs docs

[felipecrs]

@RahulGautamSingh, I believe the auto-generated docs are good enough. I even had an extra sentence but thought it was superfluous.

199d233

What do you think?

EDIT: Some examples:

• https://docs.renovatebot.com/configuration-options/#commitbodytable
• https://docs.renovatebot.com/configuration-options/#prheader
• https://docs.renovatebot.com/configuration-options/#prfooter

[jamietanna]

Thinking about this some more, I'm wondering if this should maybe be the default - what do @renovatebot/maintainers think?

IMO, it's a little confusing when a group only contains a single update and has a different title.

For instance, I noticed this earlier today on one of my projects (which I'd exepct there to be multiple dependencies in the group for)

Are there any other settings that may/may not be used when there's a group that may not be wanted if only one update is there?

[felipecrs]

I do understand the rationale behind it: if there's only one update, titling the PR after update makes it a lot more descriptive than titling it after the group.

But I tend to agree, it is a common source of confusion for my users too.

Are there any other settings that may/may not be used when there's a group that may not be wanted if only one update is there?

I can't think of anything, but have in mind anything under group is applicable in this case. It can hold arbitrary config.

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

I.e. I think it should be treated as a breaking change if we go that route.

[reduckted]

Looking at the example posted here:
#25588 (comment)

That sets groupSingleUpdates in a package rule. Can it also be applied at the top-level so that it applies to all groups (and could therefore be added to a common preset so that I don't have to edit the Renovate configs in dozens of repositories)?

[felipecrs]

Looking at the example posted here: #25588 (comment)

That sets groupSingleUpdates in a package rule. Can it also be applied at the top-level so that it applies to all groups (and could therefore be added to a common preset so that I don't have to edit the Renovate configs in dozens of repositories)?

Absolutely. It can be set at any level.

[secustor]

Thinking about this some more, I'm wondering if this should maybe be the default - what do @renovatebot/maintainers think?

SGTM, I ran into this too some times

[jamietanna]

Per comments (and +1'd by secustor) we'll make this on-by-default, and then folks who wish the old behaviour can disable it where they'd like to

[felipecrs]

Alright. Working on it.

Question: should I add a breaking change notice to it, or would you rather handle that yourself during merge?

[jamietanna]

I'm happy arguing this isn't a full "breaking change", so no need to document anything additionally

I'll see about whether it's worth adding a bit of a call out in the GitHub Release itself

[github-actions]

🎉 This PR is included in version 43.208.0 🎉

The release is available on:

• GitHub release
• 43.208.0

Your semantic-release bot 📦🚀

[faenschi]

Hi! We've noticed that since this PR merged, our Maven dependency MR titles changed from:

deps(deps): update dependency ch.foobar.ri:commonphases to v33

to:

deps(deps): update version.foobar.commonphases to v33

This change appears to have been released in a patch/minor version update, but it was breaking for us—a lot of our PRs got recreated due to the title format change.

We understand this is due to the new groupSingleUpdates behavior—when a group contains only a single update, Renovate titles the PR using the group property name instead of the individual dependency name.

Questions:

1. Was this a breaking change intended for a major version bump? It seems like this should have been opt-in rather than the default.
2. Should groupSingleUpdates default to false for Maven/Java projects to maintain backward compatibility?
3. Are there docs explaining the migration path for users affected by this change?

We've worked around this by setting "groupSingleUpdates": false in our Renovate presets, but other teams may hit this issue.

Thanks!

[jamietanna]

Moving discussion into #43756