The Count reads your repositories' manifests, looks up newer versions, and
opens one pull request per update, with release notes. One process handles the
whole batch: repositories run concurrently, and every package is looked up once
however many repositories use it.
Get started
mise use -g --minimum-release-age 0 packslip:sweepies/count-patchula
Other ways to install him are on the installation page.
Invite the Count into a repository with patchula.pkl:
amends "PatchulaConfig.pkl"
prs { dashboard = true }
Then, with a GitHub App installation token in PATCHULA_TOKEN:
patchula run --dry-run acme/my-app # look first
patchula run acme/my-app # then let him bite
Lockfile tools, and the versions of the tools in mise.toml, come from
mise, so it needs to be on the PATH. See getting started.
The CLI is the quickest way to try him, and the GitHub
Action runs him on a
schedule. The recommended way to run him is the GitHub App
server: one long-running
process keeps every cache warm, batches work across repositories, and acts on
PR checkboxes the moment you tick them. It idles cheaply between batches, so
usage-billed hosts such as Railway suit it well. Each release publishes it as
a container image,
ghcr.io/sweepies/count-patchula, for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. Once it is up, patchula run --remote runs on it from your machine, signed in with GitHub, with no
token or toolchain of your own.
What you get
- Real lockfiles for npm, pnpm, Yarn, Bun, Cargo, Go, Terraform, uv, Poetry,
NuGet, Bundler, Composer and mise, regenerated with the real tools. npm and
pnpm locks go through aube, which is ten to twenty times
faster than npm and pnpm at it.
- Managers for JavaScript, GitHub Actions, mise, Rust, Go, Docker, Compose,
Kubernetes, Kustomize, Flux, Helm, Terraform, Python, Maven, Gradle, .NET,
Ruby, PHP, pre-commit, devcontainers, Woodpecker CI, GitLab CI, Nix flakes, APM,
and your own regexes, plus notices for new Copier template versions.
- Typed configuration in Pkl. A typo is an error with a
line number, not a silently ignored key.
- Careful defaults: exact pins, digest-pinned actions and images, a 24-hour
release-age wait, and nothing auto-merges until you say so, except CA root
bundles and other reference data, which are only useful while current.
- A batch PR you fill by ticking a box on any update PR, keeping the version
you reviewed.
- A dependency dashboard, schedule windows, PR limits, grouping, auto-merge
behind check gates, and a GitHub App server mode driven by webhooks.
- A terminal UI (
patchula tui) to browse updates, and in a checkout, pick
some and write them into your files. patchula apply writes them without
asking, for scripts and pre-commit hooks.
How fast
Against Renovate 44.173.1 on six large public repositories (mastodon, sentry,
grafana, monica, jellyfin, kafka), each tool alone on the same c7i.xlarge:
| Count Patchula | Renovate | |
|---|
| All six, cold | 150.5 s | 920.6 s | 6.1× faster |
| All six, warm | 14.8 s | 274.3 s | 18.5× faster |
| Peak memory, grafana cold | 494 MB | 3.6 GB | 7.3× less |
The benchmarks page has
the method and every run.
Coming from Renovate
The compatibility matrix
lists every manager, datasource and feature, and migrating a
config maps
renovate.json options onto Pkl.
Development
Install mise, then mise trust and mise install.
mise run build # build the workspace
mise run test # offline tests, including the real lockfile tool tests
mise run lint # every hk check, Clippy (warnings denied) included
mise run hooks:install # the pre-commit and commit-msg hooks
mise run ci # every check CI runs, in parallel
mise run docs:dev # the documentation site for this checkout
Builds go through mr boxington for a shared
Cargo cache. Tests never touch the network: they replay HTTP fixtures the Count
recorded himself. Tools only the tests need, like the lockfile engines, are
task-scoped, so a plain mise install does not fetch them.
Count Patchula is an independent implementation under the MIT licence. Renovate
(AGPL-3.0) may be run as a black box to compare results, but its source code,
preset data and test fixtures are never read, copied or adapted into this
repository.
Thanks
Count Patchula would not exist without @jdx. His
work inspired it, and it is built on his tools at every step:
mise installs every toolchain and lockfile engine,
aube writes the npm and pnpm locks,
mr boxington caches the builds,
usage generates the CLI reference and completions,
tak runs the benchmarks,
communique writes the release notes, and
packslip signs the releases. Thank you, Jeff.
License
MIT
