RHDH Plugin GitOps Updater

Important

This is a Proof of Concept (PoC) GitHub Action. Use at your own risk in production environments.

A GitHub Action that monitors and updates RHDH plugins in your RHDH GitOps repository. This action checks for new plugin versions and creates pull requests to keep your RHDH installation up to date.

Features

🔄 Automatic Plugin Updates: Monitors RHDH plugin versions from the GitHub Container Registry
🎯 Flexible PR Strategies: Create separate PRs per plugin, a single joint PR for all updates, or grouped PRs for matching frontend/backend packages
🔒 Safe Updates: Preserves YAML formatting and validates plugin definitions
🚀 GitOps Integration: Works seamlessly with GitOps-based RHDH deployments
⚙️ Configurable: Customize PR limits, config paths, and update strategies
📝 Detailed Logging: Optional verbose mode for debugging

Quick Start

Add this workflow to your GitOps repository at .github/workflows/update-rhdh-plugins.yaml:

name: Update RHDH Plugins

on:
  schedule:
    # Run daily at 2 AM UTC
    - cron: "0 2 * * *"
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  update-plugins:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Update RHDH plugins
        uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
        with:
          config-path: "charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Usage Examples

Basic Usage with Separate PRs

Create individual pull requests for each plugin update:

- name: Update RHDH plugins
  uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
  with:
    config-path: "charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    update-pr-strategy: "separate"

Joint PR for All Updates

Create a single pull request containing all plugin updates:

- name: Update RHDH plugins
  uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
  with:
    config-path: "charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    update-pr-strategy: "joint"

Grouped PRs for Frontend and Backend Updates

Changing the update-pr-strategy field from separate to grouped results in creating one PR for an exact frontend/backend package pair, such as pluginabc and pluginabc-backend, when both have updates in the same run and use the same tag prefix. Each package keeps its own target version; the versions can differ. Packages without a matching update get individual PRs.

- name: Update RHDH plugins
  uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
  with:
    config-path: "charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    update-pr-strategy: "grouped"

Grouping removes only a terminal -backend from the full OCI package name and collects updates with the same resulting name and tag channel. Namespaces are preserved; backend modules and packages in different tag channels remain separate. An existing individual update branch is skipped before grouping, so a partner that arrives later gets its own PR without duplicating the original update. Existing PRs are not refreshed; newer target versions can create new PRs, following the separate strategy.

The pr-creation-limit counts newly created PRs per run, and a pair counts as one. Existing branches and failed creation attempts do not consume the limit. PR creation failures are logged and other groups continue, matching the separate strategy. Grouped mode completes discovery before creating PRs: a lookup exception aborts the run without creating any grouped PRs, while a package with no available versions is skipped normally.

Custom Configuration Location

If your dynamic plugins configuration is at a different YAML path:

- name: Update RHDH plugins
  uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
  with:
    config-path: "dynamic-plugins.yaml"
    config-location: "plugins.dynamic"
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Limit Number of PRs

Limit the number of pull requests created in a single run:

- name: Update RHDH plugins
  uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
  with:
    config-path: "charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    update-pr-strategy: "separate"
    pr-creation-limit: "3"

Enable Verbose Logging

For debugging or detailed information:

- name: Update RHDH plugins
  uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
  with:
    config-path: "charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    verbose: "1"

Custom Tag Prefixes

Specify custom tag prefixes to filter plugin versions:

- name: Update RHDH plugins
  uses: thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater@v1
  with:
    config-path: "charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
    github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    tag-prefixes: |
      next__
      v1__
      stable__

Inputs

Input	Description	Required	Default
`config-path`	Path to the dynamic plugins config YAML file (e.g., `charts/rhdh/values.yaml`)	Yes	-
`config-location`	Location of the dynamic plugins config inside the YAML file	No	`redhat-developer-hub.dynamicPlugins.plugins`
`github-token`	GitHub token for API access and PR creation	Yes	-
`update-pr-strategy`	PR creation strategy: `separate`, `joint`, or `grouped`	No	`separate`
`pr-creation-limit`	Maximum new PRs per run (0 for unlimited, applies to `separate` and `grouped`; a pair counts as one PR)	No	`0`
`tag-prefixes`	Tag prefixes to consider when checking for plugin updates (newline-separated list)	No	`next__`
`base-branch`	Base branch for pull requests (overrides the branch the workflow runs on)	No	`main`
`verbose`	Enable verbose logging (0 = normal, 1 = debug)	No	`0`

How It Works

Discovery: The action reads your dynamic plugins configuration file and identifies all RHDH plugins
Version Check: For each plugin, it queries the GitHub Container Registry for the latest version
Comparison: Compares current versions with the latest available versions
PR Creation: Creates pull requests based on your chosen strategy:
- Separate: One PR per plugin update
- Joint: Single PR with all updates
- Grouped: One PR per matching frontend/backend pair in the same tag channel; unmatched updates get individual PRs
Formatting Preservation: Updates are made via string replacement to preserve your YAML formatting

Supported Plugin Format

The action reads both dynamic and intelligent assistant plugins from a parent chart's values file:

redhat-developer-hub:
  dynamicPlugins:
    plugins:
      - disabled: false
        package: oci://ghcr.io/redhat-developer/rhdh-plugin-export-overlays/backstage-plugin-name:next__1.0.0
  intelligentAssistant:
    plugins:
      - disabled: false
        package: oci://ghcr.io/redhat-developer/rhdh-plugin-export-overlays/lightspeed-plugin:next__2.0.0

If a new list is missing, the action falls back to its legacy location: global.dynamic.plugins for dynamic plugins and global.lightspeed.plugins for intelligent assistant plugins. The two fallbacks are independent. An empty new list takes precedence over its legacy list. Matching package tags are updated wherever they occur in the file. The config-location input overrides the primary dynamic plugins location.

Note: The legacy format with !plugin-name suffix (e.g., ...:next__1.0.0!backstage-plugin-name) is also supported for backward compatibility.

Tag Prefixes

The action uses tag prefixes to filter which plugin versions to consider for updates. By default, it looks for tags with the next__ prefix (e.g., next__1.0.0). You can customize this behavior using the tag-prefixes input to match your versioning scheme.

Dual Version Support

The action supports dual versions to track two separate version components in a single tag. This is useful when you need to track both the RHDH plugin version and the underlying Backstage core version, for example.

Format

Nested versions use double underscores (__) to separate the primary and secondary version components:

{prefix}__{primary_version}__{secondary_version}

Examples:

next__1.42.5__0.1.0 - primary version: 1.42.5, secondary version: 0.1.0
stable__2.10.15__1.5.3 - primary version: 2.10.15, secondary version: 1.5.3

Permissions

The action requires the following permissions:

jobs:
  update-plugins:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: write
      packages: read
    steps:
      # ...

Development

Local Testing

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/thepetk/rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater.git
cd rhdh-plugin-gitops-updater

Install dependencies:
```
make install
```
Run tests:
```
make test
```
Run linting:
```
make ruff
```
Run type checking:
```
make ty
```

Running Locally

You can run the updater script directly:

export GITHUB_TOKEN="your-token"
export GITHUB_REPOSITORY="owner/repo"
export DYNAMIC_PLUGINS_CONFIG_YAML_FILE_PATH="charts/rhdh/values.yaml"
export UPDATE_PR_STRATEGY="separate"

uv run main.py

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request or open an issue you may have noticed.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.github		.github
src		src
tests		tests
.gitignore		.gitignore
.pre-commit-config.yaml		.pre-commit-config.yaml
.python-version		.python-version
Dockerfile		Dockerfile
LICENSE		LICENSE
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
action.yml		action.yml
entrypoint.sh		entrypoint.sh
main.py		main.py
pyproject.toml		pyproject.toml
uv.lock		uv.lock

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RHDH Plugin GitOps Updater

Features

Quick Start

Usage Examples

Basic Usage with Separate PRs

Joint PR for All Updates

Grouped PRs for Frontend and Backend Updates

Custom Configuration Location

Limit Number of PRs

Enable Verbose Logging

Custom Tag Prefixes

Inputs

How It Works

Supported Plugin Format

Tag Prefixes

Dual Version Support

Format

Permissions

Development

Local Testing

Running Locally

Contributing

License

About

Releases

Contributors

Languages

Latest commit

History

Folders and files

Repository files navigation

RHDH Plugin GitOps Updater

Features

Quick Start

Usage Examples

Basic Usage with Separate PRs

Joint PR for All Updates

Grouped PRs for Frontend and Backend Updates

Custom Configuration Location

Limit Number of PRs

Enable Verbose Logging

Custom Tag Prefixes

Inputs

How It Works

Supported Plugin Format

Tag Prefixes

Dual Version Support

Format

Permissions

Development

Local Testing

Running Locally

Contributing

License

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