Trigger Renovate after release creation

[FloSchick]

Hi there,
First of all, thank you very much for this awesome action, I love it!
I have a question about integrating Renovate into workflows that use this action. My goal is to trigger Renovate automatically as soon as a new release is created by this action to update Terraform module dependencies across my repositories.

The Problem

I initially tried to trigger Renovate when the release event is fired, but I quickly ran into GitHub's limitation that prevents actions from being triggered by events that were created by other actions: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/25281
Potential Solutions I'm Considering

Using repository_dispatch - Having this action trigger a custom event
Using workflow_dispatch - Having this action directly trigger the Renovate workflow
Adding an output flag - An output that indicates whether the action actually created a release (vs just ran on a PR)

Feature Request

Would it be possible to add an additional output to this action that indicates whether it actually created/published a release? This would allow downstream workflows to conditionally trigger Renovate only when a release was actually published, rather than on every run.

[virgofx]

Hi @FloSchick - Thank you for the detailed feature request and for using the action! I appreciate you taking the time to explain the use case with Renovate integration.

Understanding the Issue

You're absolutely right about the limitation you've identified. The current outputs like changed-module-names and changed-module-paths are populated during the planning phase (when the action runs on PRs to detect changes), but they're not available during the release phase when releases are actually published after PR merge.

This creates a gap where you can't easily determine in a workflow whether the action actually published any releases, which is exactly what you need to conditionally trigger Renovate.

Proposed Solution

As you mentioned, I believe adding release-specific outputs would solve this problem. I'm thinking of adding outputs like:

• releases-published - Boolean indicating whether any releases were actually created
• published-module-names - JSON array of module names that received releases
• published-modules-details - JSON object with detailed release information (versions, tags, etc.)

These outputs would be populated when the action runs in release mode (e.g. against the main branch once a PR has been merged) and would give you exactly what you need to:

1. Conditionally trigger downstream workflows only when releases actually happen
2. Pass specific module information to Renovate if needed
3. Use with repository_dispatch or workflow_dispatch patterns to work around GitHub's action-triggering limitations

---

Does this approach align with what you were envisioning and would this work for your use case? Any specific details you'd like included in the published module information?

[FloSchick]

Hi @virgofx thanks. for the suggestion, for me even the releases-published boolean would be sufficient but i can think of other use cases where it might be beneficial to directly implement an array of changed modules with the PR.

Looking forward to get this implemented 💯

[virgofx]

Hi @FloSchick I actually fixed this to ensure that during the closed event (e.g. when merged) the changed-modules outputs get updated correctly in 1.7.1.

#273

I also updated the README.md note to mention this:

Note: When using outputs during the closed event, the changed-modules-map output will show latestTag as the previous release version, while releaseTag and releaseType reflect the new release that was just created. To reference the newly published version, use the value of releaseTag.

I didn't add any new variables; but did ensure that the changed-modules-map is accurate. I believe if you detect in your GHA workflow that the event is 'closed' plus output from changed-module-names > 0 that should be sufficient to know that those modules were released.

Can you test 1.7.1 and let me know if that works for you?

[FloSchick]

@virgofx Thanks for the release! Works like a charm.