Creating a new "Renovate and changelogs" page in the docs

[rarkins]

Discussed in #25867

^{Originally posted by HonkingGoose November 19, 2023}

Tell us more.

Background

Many users ask about how Renovate fetches changelogs. The maintainers of course answer most of those questions, but we should get those answers and concepts into the docs.

Current info

The Renovate docs mention changelogs in a few places:

• Private packages, looking up changelogs
• Maven datasource, making your changelogs fetchable
• Github.com token for changelogs
• How to get Renovate to see Docker image changelogs, as image maintainer
• fetchChangeLogs config option
• customChangelogUrl config option
• Some Renovate managers have a "Renovate fetches changelogs step" in the how it works sections, but most do not mention how to get changelogs visible to Renovate

Related issue:

• Major overhaul of changelog retrieval #14138

Discussion

It would be nice to have a single page that explains common questions and concepts, like:

• How Renovate "sees" changelogs
• From which platforms can Renovate fetch changelogs
• Troubleshooting missing changelogs
• Advice for package maintainers (do x to get Renovate to see changelogs)
  • npm package advice
  • yarn package advice
  • other "big/much used" package advice
• Apparently Renovate can read a changelog.json file, again JSON, I don't think we explain that at all...
• Other things I'm forgetting to list, feel free to suggest!

[HonkingGoose]

@rarkins want me to start a draft PR that you can help fill out with suggestions?

[renovate-release]

🎉 This issue has been resolved in version 37.103.0 🎉

The release is available on:

• GitHub release
• 37.103.0

Your semantic-release bot 📦🚀