How can I automate the generation of dependabot configuration files for many repositories

Question

I need to configure dependabot for a large number of repos (manually configuring will take days ).

Some repos are "single language" such as typescript using a single package.json package-ecosystem: npm while other repositories are styled as "mono repos" and use a variety of languages and accompanying package managers with different nestings.

As the dependabot.yml file needs to be configured with the appropriate root and package ecosystem, I can not re-use a simple config file and expect it to work for all.

I am scripting this, but cloning so many repositories are slow and error-prone.

An example of a "complex" dependabot config file looks like this:

version: 2
updates:
- package-ecosystem: cargo
  directory: "/package/a"
  schedule:
    interval: daily
- package-ecosystem: cargo
  directory: "/package/b"
  schedule:
    interval: daily
- package-ecosystem: cargo
  directory: "/package/c"
  schedule:
    interval: daily
- package-ecosystem: cargo
  directory: "/package/a"
  schedule:
    interval: daily
- package-ecosystem: npm
  directory: "/sites/a"
  schedule:
    interval: daily
- package-ecosystem: npm
  directory: "/sites/b"
  schedule:
    interval: daily
... 20 other roots

I would hope for an option such as the following:

- package-ecosystem: npm
  directory: "/sites/*" <<<<< some wild card / pattern matching here?
  schedule:
    interval: daily
- package-ecosystem: cargo
  directory: "/package/*"
  schedule:
    interval: daily

Answer 1

GitHub Dependabot is not currently capabale of wildcards, but it has been a long requested feature in the dependabot-core repository.

Some kind people built automation that can generate a dependabot.yml file based on your wildcards and the files in your repository. For example check the Action by Makeshift on GitHub.