The operator ran the Renovate workflow manually and it failed. The cause is not
the workflow: renovate.json was never a valid Renovate config. It carried five
pseudo-comment keys (_comment, _kubernetes_comment, _unmanageable_comment,
_ignorePaths_comment, _docker_comment) because JSON has no comments, and
Renovate REJECTS unknown top-level options. Proven with the official validator:
ERROR: Found errors in configuration
Invalid configuration option: _comment
Invalid configuration option: _docker_comment
Invalid configuration option: _ignorePaths_comment
Invalid configuration option: _kubernetes_comment
Invalid configuration option: _unmanageable_comment
This is the SECOND independent reason Renovate never worked, on top of PR #77's
cron firing outside renovate.json's own schedule window. Either alone was enough
to produce "nothing ever happens"; #73 shipped both.
Converted renovate.json -> renovate.json5. JSON5 permits real // comments and
Renovate discovers renovate.json5 natively; nothing in .gitea/ or ci/ pins the
old filename and no RENOVATE_CONFIG_FILE is set. Every word of the original
rationale is preserved as positioned comments (74 comment lines) rather than
flattened into a description string.
Verified the conversion dropped nothing: 18 non-comment keys before and after,
no missing/extra keys, no changed values, docker: {enabled: true} still present.
The validator now returns "Config validated successfully".
DISPROVED while here: `enabledManagers` containing bare `regex` was suspected of
needing to be `custom.regex` (which would silently disable every inline
`# renovate:` marker). The validator accepts `regex`; unfounded, unchanged.
Renovate has still never completed a run -- this fixes one of two blockers and
nothing in the gate catches an invalid config. See the handoff.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
