"Automatically open a PR on your Git repository when a file update is needed"
Updatecli is a universal declarative update policy engine. Designed to be used from everywhere, each Updatecli "run" detects if a file needs to be updated using a tailored update policy then apply changes.
You describe your update strategy in a policy then you enforce it using Updatecli.
Every Updatecli policy is a YAML (or Go template) file that runs through three stages:
- Sources — Fetch the new value to apply (e.g. latest Docker image tag, newest Helm chart version, latest GitHub release).
- Conditions — Verify that all prerequisites are met before making any change (optional but recommended).
- Targets — Apply the change to the right file or service, and open a pull request if an SCM is configured.
Updatecli ships with 30+ built-in integrations. Here are the most common scenarios:
-
📄 File formats — Update values in YAML, JSON, TOML, XML, HCL, CSV, Dockerfiles, and
.tool-versionsfiles, or any text file with pattern matching. -
🐳 Container images — Track Docker image tags and digests from Docker Hub or any OCI-compliant registry.
-
📦 Package registries — Helm charts (including OCI), npm, PyPI, Maven, Cargo (Rust crates), Go modules, and Terraform providers/modules.
-
🏷️ Git & releases — GitHub/GitLab releases, Git tags and branches.
-
☕ Languages & runtimes — Jenkins LTS/weekly releases, Eclipse Temurin (JDK), Go language versions, Bazel modules and registry.
-
☁️ Cloud — AWS AMIs.
-
🔧 Custom logic — Shell scripts and HTTP endpoints, for anything not covered above.
Find the full list and documentation on www.updatecli.io.
| SCM Platform | Supported | Capabilities | Plugin |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub | ✅ | Clone, branch, commit, push, Pull Requests, releases | github |
| GitLab | ✅ | Clone, branch, commit, push, Merge Requests, releases | gitlab |
| Gitea | ✅ | Clone, branch, commit, push, Pull Requests, releases | gitea |
| Forgejo | ✅ | Compatible through Gitea API support | gitea |
| Bitbucket Cloud | ✅ | Clone, branch, commit, push, Pull Requests | bitbucket |
| Bitbucket Server / Stash | ✅ | Clone, branch, commit, push, Pull Requests | stash |
| Azure DevOps | ✅ | Clone, branch, commit, push, Pull Requests | azuredevops |
| Generic Git Repository | ✅ | Clone, branch, commit, push | git |
- Declarative — Define your update policy once in YAML; Updatecli handles detection and application.
- 30+ integrations — Docker, Helm, GitHub releases, npm, PyPI, Terraform, AWS AMIs, and more — out of the box.
- Any CI/CD — Runs as a single binary. Drop it into GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or any shell.
- Safe by default — Use
--dry-runto preview every change before it is applied. - Extensible — Add custom logic via shell scripts or HTTP, or contribute a new Go plugin.
There are already many projects out there to continuously update your files, but they all have an opinionated way of doing it and they often want you to adopt a new platform. Building and distributing software is a difficult task and good practices constantly evolve. Updatecli was built to work independently of the underlying dependencies to update, wherever you need it and combining whatever workflow you are using, as you can see in the following section.
The Quick-start is available on www.updatecli.io/docs/prologue/quick-start
Updatecli is a Go binary available for Linux, MacOS and Windows from the release page or installed via other methods.
Verify File Checksum Signature
Instead of signing all release assets, Updatecli signs the checksums file containing the different release assets checksum. You can download/copy the three files 'checksums.txt.sig' and 'checksums.txt' from the latest release. Once you have the three files locally, you can execute the following command
cosign verify-blob --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli" --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' --bundle checksums.txt.sig checksums.txt
A successful output looks like
Verified OK
Now you can verify the assets checksum integrity.
Verify File Checksum Integrity
Before verifying the file integrity, you should first verify the checksum file signature. Once you've download both the checksums.txt and your binary, you can verify the integrity of your file by running:
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt
Verify Container signature
cosign verify --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli" --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com" ghcr.io/updatecli/updatecli:v0.118.0
The documentation of Updatecli is available at www.updatecli.io, but you can also look at the examples section to get an overview.
This example is copy of the quickstart. You can also find it on www.updatecli.io/docs/prologue/quick-start
We define an update strategy in "updatecli.yaml" then we run updatecli apply --config updatecli.yaml.
Our objective is to know if the Jenkins project published a new stable version, if they build an appropriated docker image specifically for jdk11 and automatically update our infrastructure accordingly.
## updatecli.yaml
name: Update Jenkins Version
scms:
default:
kind: github
spec:
user: olblak
email: [email protected]
owner: olblak
repository: charts
token: mySecretTokenWhichShouldNeverUsedThisWay
username: olblak
branch: main
sources:
jenkins:
name: Get latest Jenkins version
kind: jenkins
spec:
release: weekly
conditions:
docker:
name: "Test if Docker Image jenkins/jenkins is Published on DockerHub"
kind: dockerimage
spec:
image: jenkins/jenkins
architecture: amd64
targets:
bumpJenkins:
name: Update values.yaml to the latest Jenkins version
scmID: default
kind: yaml
spec:
file: charts/jenkins/values.yaml
key: $.jenkins.controller.imageTag
actions:
default:
title: Open a GitHub pull request with new Jenkins version
kind: github/pullrequest
scmID: default
target:
- bumpJenkins
spec:
automerge: true
mergemethod: squash
labels:
- dependencies |
What it says:
|
More information here
We use the GitHub milestone Next to prioritize our effort. As our requirements evolve we regularly add plugins or improve existing ones.
If you ever need a specific integration, feel free to either:
- Contribute it, we are more than happy to help. Link
- Comment on existing issues as we may prioritize issues affecting other users. Link
- Sponsor financially the project link
- Feel free to reach out to [email protected] to see how we can help you.
As a community-oriented project, all contributions are greatly appreciated!
Here is a non-exhaustive list of possible contributions:
- ⭐️ this repository.
- Propose a new feature request.
- Highlight an existing feature request with 👍.
- Contribute to any repository in the updatecli organization
- Share the love
More information available at CONTRIBUTING
- 2026
- Devoxx (FR) - Industrialisez la maintenance de vos stacks Dev et Ops Video
- 2025
- 2024
- DevOps Days 15 year anniversary celebration (BE) - Continuously Update Everything Video
- 2023
- 2022
- CDcon (US) - Dependency Management: Where the Fork are We? Video
