Docs

Deprecations

Description

Deprecated settings still work. Updatecli accepts the old form, logs a warning, and translates it to the new one, so a manifest keeps running between releases. The warning is the notice: nothing on this page breaks a pipeline today, and everything on it goes away eventually.

How long a deprecation lasts. COMPATIBILITY.md sets the rule: an old form is only ever dropped in a major release. No patch or minor release removes anything on this page, so a manifest that runs today goes on running until the next major ships. The Since column is there to tell you how long a form has been on notice, not to start a clock.

How each entry behaves. Not all of them are simple renames, and the exceptions are easy to miss while skimming. Every entry in Deprecations by release carries one or more of these markers:

  • translated - Updatecli rewrites the old form to the new one on every run, so the pipeline behaves as though the manifest had already been migrated.

  • warned - accepted exactly as written, nothing is rewritten, so migrating is a manual edit.

  • ignored - the setting has no effect at all beyond the warning. commitmessage.title is the only one, see Commit messages.

  • error - already refused outright under some setting or combination. query becomes a hard error as soon as the engine moves to dasel/v2 or later, see Dasel engines.

Tip

Three commands answer "does any of this apply to me?":

  • updatecli pipeline diff parses and validates the whole manifest without applying anything, so every deprecation warning surfaces.

  • updatecli manifest validate --experimental --strict reports the deprecated keywords on their own and fails instead of only warning, which makes it the one to run in CI. It is available from v0.120.0 and is experimental, so it exits unless --experimental is set, see Experimental features.

  • updatecli manifest upgrade prints the translated manifest, and writes it back to the file with -i. That migrates every translated entry in one pass. It cannot help with the warned, ignored, and error entries, which need a real edit.

Deprecations by release

The same entries as the rest of this page, one row per release, newest first. Everything listed here still works, and goes on working until the next major release (see Description).

ReleaseReleasedDeprecated in this release

v0.120.0

2026-08-05

dasel/v1 and dasel/v2 on json, toml, csv (warned)
query on toml and csv (error from dasel/v2)

v0.116.0

2026-04-10

automerge on github/pullrequest (translated)

v0.114.0

2026-02-24

updatecli apply, updatecli diff, updatecli prepare (translated)
commitmessage.title (ignored)

v0.105.0

2025-08-01

dasel/v1 on json (warned)
query on json (error from dasel/v2)

v0.97.0

2025-03-31

key: name and key: hash on githubrelease (translated)

v0.86.0

2024-11-04

conditionids on targets (translated, error with disableconditions)

v0.80.0

2024-07-10

update-compose.yaml (warned)

v0.64.1

2023-10-19

title at the top level (translated)

v0.51.0

2023-05-26

yaml keys without the $. prefix (translated)

v0.44.0

2023-02-09

indexurl on cargopackage (translated)

v0.40.0

2022-12-12

pullrequests (translated, error with actions)
autodiscovery.pullrequestid (translated, error with actionid)
kind: github and kind: gitea (translated)
scmID on actions (translated)

v0.37.0

2022-11-07

multiple on json, toml, csv (translated)

v0.34.0

2022-09-28

depends_on (translated)

v0.33.0

2022-09-03

url on maven (translated)

v0.31.0

2022-08-27

updatecli show (translated)

v0.25.0

2022-05-09

camelCase transformer names (translated, ignored when the lowercase form is set too)

v0.23.0

2022-04-06

scmID and sourceID (translated)

Note
The updatecli-action v1 and v2 branches are not in the table. They belong to updatecli/updatecli-action, which is versioned separately from Updatecli itself, so no Updatecli release deprecated them and the policy described above does not apply. See Branches v1 and v2.

Commands

The four original top-level commands moved under pipeline and manifest. All four still run and log Deprecated command, please instead use …​.

DeprecatedUse insteadSince

updatecli apply

updatecli pipeline apply

v0.114.0

updatecli diff

updatecli pipeline diff

v0.114.0

updatecli prepare

updatecli pipeline prepare

v0.114.0

updatecli show

updatecli manifest show

v0.31.0

See the Commands reference for the current command tree.

Manifest keys

Stage identifiers

Mixed-case and snake_case keys were normalised to lowercase. The old spelling is copied onto the new key and cleared.

DeprecatedUse insteadApplies toSince

scmID

scmid

sources, conditions, targets

v0.23.0

scmID

scmid

actions, which only exist from this release on

v0.40.0

sourceID

sourceid

conditions, targets

v0.23.0

depends_on

dependson

sources, conditions, targets

v0.34.0

conditionids

dependson, with each entry prefixed condition#

targets

v0.86.0

conditionids is the one that changes shape rather than spelling. A target listing conditionids: [check] becomes:

targets:
  default:
    dependson:
      - condition#check

Updatecli performs that translation itself and, in doing so, also sets disableconditions: true on the target (the conditions named in dependson are the only ones that gate it).

Important
Setting the old key and the new key together is not a warning. conditionids combined with dependson makes Updatecli ignore conditionids; conditionids combined with disableconditions: true is an outright error, because disabling conditions while naming conditions is contradictory. The same applies to scmID alongside scmid on an action.

Resource kind values must also be lowercase. A capitalised kind is accepted and lowercased with kind value "…​" must be lowercase.

Top-level keys

DeprecatedUse insteadNotesSince

pullrequests

actions

Mutually exclusive - using both is an error, not a warning

v0.40.0

title

name

Names the manifest

v0.64.1

autodiscovery.pullrequestid

autodiscovery.actionid

Mutually exclusive - using both is an error

v0.40.0

Action kinds

Both were renamed when actions grew beyond pull requests.

DeprecatedUse insteadSince

kind: github

kind: github/pullrequest

v0.40.0

kind: gitea

kind: gitea/pullrequest

v0.40.0

Transformers

Every camelCase transformer was renamed to lowercase, all of them in the same release. The behaviour is unchanged.

DeprecatedUse insteadSince

addPrefix

addprefix

v0.25.0

addSuffix

addsuffix

v0.25.0

trimPrefix

trimprefix

v0.25.0

trimSuffix

trimsuffix

v0.25.0

semverInc

semverinc

v0.25.0

findSubMatch

findsubmatch

v0.25.0

findSubMatch.captureIndex

findsubmatch.captureindex

v0.25.0

The deprecated spellings are hidden from the JSON schema, so an editor completing from the schema will only ever offer the lowercase form. See the "Transformer" page.

Actions

github/pullrequest: automerge

Deprecated in v0.116.0 in favour of merge.strategy, which offers three behaviours where automerge had two.

BeforeAfter
actions:
  default:
    kind: github/pullrequest
    spec:
      automerge: true
actions:
  default:
    kind: github/pullrequest
    spec:
      merge:
        strategy: auto

automerge: false is not a no-op, it translates to merge.strategy: manual:

Old valueTranslates toMeaning

automerge: true

merge.strategy: auto

Hand the pull request to GitHub’s auto-merge, which merges it once the required checks pass.

automerge: false

merge.strategy: manual

Leave the pull request open for a human. This is also the default when merge is unset.

- (no equivalent)

merge.strategy: client

Updatecli merges the pull request itself, after merge.after has elapsed (24h by default).

client has no automerge equivalent, so it is only reachable after migrating. See the "GitHub Pull Request" page.

Resource plugins

Dasel engines

json, toml, and csv read and write through Dasel, selected by the engine parameter. dasel/v3 arrives in v0.120.0 and, from that release, both dasel/v1 and dasel/v2 are deprecated in favour of it:

Engine "dasel/v1" is deprecated and will be removed in a future updatecli version. Please use "dasel/v3" instead.

The history differs per plugin. json has warned about dasel/v1 since v0.105.0, where the warning pointed at dasel/v2 instead. toml and csv had no engine parameter at all before v0.120.0, so that release is where their first warning appears.

PluginDeprecated enginesSince

json

dasel/v1

v0.105.0 (retargeted at dasel/v3 in v0.120.0)

json

dasel/v2

v0.120.0

toml, csv

dasel/v1, dasel/v2

v0.120.0

Warning

dasel/v1 is still the default. A json, toml, or csv resource that never mentions engine runs on the deprecated engine and emits that warning on every run. Set the engine explicitly to silence it:

sources:
  default:
    kind: json
    spec:
      engine: dasel/v3
      file: package.json
      key: version

engine: dasel is an alias that always resolves to the newest engine, currently dasel/v3. It is not deprecated, but it does mean the behaviour of your manifest changes when a new engine lands.

Migrating the engine forces a second change. Under dasel/v2 and dasel/v3, query is rejected rather than warned about:

engine "dasel/v3" requires the parameter "key" over "query"

So rename query to key in the same edit.

Setting engine: dasel/v3 is not a flag flip either. The Dasel v3 selector syntax is richer than the v1 and v2 one, and it is not backward compatible with it, so the keys themselves have to be rewritten. The leading dot is the usual casualty, .version is a parse error under dasel/v3:

BeforeAfter
sources:
  default:
    kind: json
    spec:
      file: package.json
      key: .version
sources:
  default:
    kind: json
    spec:
      engine: dasel/v3
      file: package.json
      key: version

The "JSON" page compares the selectors engine by engine, and the Dasel documentation covers the v3 syntax in full.

Deprecated parameters

PluginDeprecatedUse insteadNotesSince

json

query

key

Accepted under dasel/v1, hard error under dasel/v2 and dasel/v3

v0.105.0

toml, csv

query

key

Same rule, these plugins only gained engine in v0.120.0

v0.120.0

json, toml, csv

multiple

query

key + multiple is rewritten to query

v0.37.0

maven

url

repository

Prefix the old URL onto the repository name

v0.33.0

cargopackage

indexurl

registry.url

Copied across automatically

v0.44.0

githubrelease

key: name

key: tagname

v0.97.0

githubrelease

key: hash

key: taghash

v0.97.0

Commit messages

Warning

commitmessage.title is ignored, not renamed (deprecated in v0.114.0). The commit title is now always generated from the target name (or its description), so a manifest that sets it sees no effect at all beyond the warning:

commitMessage.title is deprecated and will be ignored. The commit title is now always generated from the target name or description.

To control the commit title, rename the target. Everything else under commitmessage (type, scope, body, footers, hidecredit) still applies.

YAML key syntax

Warning

yaml keys are expected to be JSONPath expressions beginning with $.. A key written in the older dotted form is rewritten automatically and warned about, since v0.51.0:

current yaml key is "spec.version" and should be updated to "$.spec.version"

The rewrite is scheduled to become an error in a future major release. Update the keys now:

DeprecatedUse instead

key: spec.version

key: $.spec.version

key: metadata.annotations.example\.com/version

key: $.metadata.annotations.'example.com/version'

This applies to key and to every entry in keys, on sources, conditions, and targets alike.

Compose file name

The default compose file was renamed from update-compose.yaml to updatecli-compose.yaml in v0.80.0. The old name is still picked up, with a warning:

Deprecated default compose file "update-compose.yaml" detected. Please rename it to "updatecli-compose.yaml"

If both files exist, Updatecli uses the deprecated one and says so:

Both default compose files "update-compose.yaml" and "updatecli-compose.yaml" detected. Please remove "update-compose.yaml" to start using "updatecli-compose.yaml"

Renaming the file is the whole migration. See the "Compose" page.

updatecli-action

Branches v1 and v2

The v1 and v2 branches of updatecli/updatecli-action are deprecated. Pin a released version instead, or track main if you deliberately want the branch tip.

These branches belong to the action’s own repository, which is versioned separately from Updatecli, so this deprecation is not tied to any Updatecli release and is absent from Deprecations by release.

Go Further

Last updated on September 21, 2026
Prev
Experimental features
Next
Contributing