Support Renovate updating of Cypress Docker images

[MikeMcC399]

What would you like?

Ensure that all externally used images can take advantage of Renovate support of Docker image updates.

Why is this needed?

Users need an automated way to update and test new releases of Cypress Docker images used in CI in a controlled manner.

Renovate is an automated dependency update system, used internally by Cypress, and by other well-known industry players (see Why use Renovate).

The Renovate Docker documentation states:

Renovate supports upgrading dependencies in various types of Docker definition files:

• Docker's Dockerfile files
• Docker Compose docker-compose.yml, compose.yml files
• Visual Studio Code dev containers and GitHub Codespaces images and features
• CircleCI config files
• Kubernetes manifest files
• Ansible configuration files

Discussion

Docker is able to work with Cypress Docker image tags that "look" like a version (see Docker > How it Works).

Repo name	Tag name	Renovate-Docker compatible	Example
cypress/factory	FACTORY_VERSION	yes	5.1.0
cypress/base	BASE_IMAGE_TAG	yes	22.11.0
cypress/browsers	BROWSERS_IMAGE_TAG	NO	node-22.11.0-chrome-131.0.6778.69-1-ff-132.0.2-edge-131.0.2903.51-1
cypress/included	INCLUDED_IMAGE_SHORT_TAG	yes	13.16.0
cypress/included	INCLUDED_IMAGE_TAG	NO	cypress-13.16.0-node-22.11.0-chrome-131.0.6778.69-1-ff-132.0.2-edge-131.0.2903.51-1

cypress-docker-images/factory/.env

Lines 44 to 49 in a677bf3

	BASE_IMAGE_TAG="${NODE_VERSION}"
	BROWSERS_IMAGE_TAG="node-${NODE_VERSION}-chrome-${CHROME_VERSION}-ff-${FIREFOX_VERSION}-edge-${EDGE_VERSION}"
	INCLUDED_IMAGE_SHORT_TAG="${CYPRESS_VERSION}"
	INCLUDED_IMAGE_TAG="cypress-${CYPRESS_VERSION}-${BROWSERS_IMAGE_TAG}"

Adding a BROWSERS_IMAGE_SHORT_TAG defined as simply NODE_VERSION would add a Renovate-Docker-compatible tag to the cypress/browsers image. This would close the gap and ensure that each image type has one Renovate-Docker-compatible tag.

Like the INCLUDED_IMAGE_SHORT_TAG, the image labeled by the BROWSERS_IMAGE_SHORT_TAG would not be immutable, it would point to the latest published cypress/browsers image for a given NODE_VERSION.

For instance, given the following set of cypress/browser published images, the image name cypress/browsers:22.11.0 would successively move to point to each new image as it is published.

Image	Publication
cypress/browsers:node-22.11.0-chrome-130.0.6723.69-1-ff-132.0-edge-130.0.2849.56-1	Oct 30, 2024
cypress/browsers:node-22.11.0-chrome-130.0.6723.116-1-ff-132.0.1-edge-130.0.2849.68-1	Nov 6, 2024
cypress/browsers:node-22.11.0-chrome-131.0.6778.69-1-ff-132.0.2-edge-131.0.2903.51-1	Nov 19, 2024

Users who need an immutable set of browser versions would use the long BROWSERS_IMAGE_TAG such as in cypress/browsers:node-22.11.0-chrome-130.0.6723.69-1-ff-132.0-edge-130.0.2849.56-1. Those who need Renovate compatibility in CircleCI, or other supported definition files, or who simply prefer the shorter notation, would use the BROWSERS_IMAGE_SHORT_TAG, such as cypress/browsers:22.11.0.

[MikeMcC399]

I plan to submit changes to implement this suggestion.

[MikeMcC399]

• PR docs: update tag descriptions #1258 adds tag documentation. To avoid documentation maintainability issues there is no mention of Renovate in the Cypress Docker images documentation.

[MikeMcC399]

Docker Hub repo cypress/browsers shows the short-form image tag is now published:

docker pull cypress/browsers:22.11.0

[MikeMcC399]

Request is now implemented