Question on config merging / force override

[lfrancke]

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GitHub / 37.349 & main branch

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I have a config in the repository that looks like this:

  "lockFileMaintenance": {
    "enabled": true,
    "schedule": [
      "after 5:00 and before 6:00 every weekday"
    ]
  },

When running renovate manually I applied this config snippet in my config.js:

force: {
        schedule: [],
        prCreation: "immediate",
        lockFileMaintenance: {
            enabled: true,
            schedule: null
        }
    }

And that caused lockFileMaintenance to fail because it'd generate a branch name called renovate/.x which is wrong.
It turns out that the force does override the entire lockFileMaintenance block including the branchTopic (should be lock-file-maintenance but then defaulted to the bad value).

Is this expected?
In my repository config I also only specify a subset of options so I kinda naively assumed that I can also just specify a subset in the force as well.

I do now see this comment in the docs:

We recommend you avoid the force config option, if possible.

It can be used to "force" config over the top of other config or rules which might be merged later, so at times can cause confusion - especially if it's defined in Global config and overriding settings in Repository config.

What is the recommended way to override things like this schedule at runtime?
That said: It seems as if the schedule is ignored anyway but that seems like a different issue.

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[rarkins]

We probably should do a "deep" merge of lockFileMaintenance and other similar objects.

In the meantime you might be able to succeed with a package rule like this:

{
  "lockFileMaintenance": {
    "enabled": true
  },
  "packageFiles": [
	{
	  "matchUpdateTypes": ["lockFileMaintenance"],
	  "force": {
	    "schedule": "at any time"
	  }
	}
  ]
}

This will turn on lockFileMaintenance for any repo which hasn't explicitly turned it off themselves (which should be rare, because it's off by default). Then it should force the schedule to be at any time.

[lfrancke]

Thank you!
It turns out that the schedule is ignored anyway.......don't ask me why.
But I just removed my override and everything works as expected.

But yes: I did expect it to be a deep merge as the all the other config merging uses the same strategy. But it's good to know.

Thanks for your help