Updating your Saltext¶

Copier allows you to keep your Salt extension repository up to date with the latest best practices. Updating fetches the latest template release, uses your saved answers as defaults, and applies your customizations.

Manual update¶

Manual updates let you:

Update answers to existing questions
Provide answers to new questions
Resolve merge conflicts when customized files change in the template

Workflow¶

Ensure you are in your project’s root directory and run:

git switch main && git switch -c copier-update
copier update --trust

Review your previous answers and provide answers to any new questions.
Check for and resolve any merge conflicts:
```
git status
```
Review, then stage the changes:
```
git status
git diff
git add .
```
Run pre-commit on the entire repository and ensure it passes:
```
pre-commit run -a
```

Commit and submit the update via a PR:

git add . && git commit -m "Update to Copier template 0.4.2" && git push

Skip reviewing answers¶

To skip reviewing existing answers:

copier update --trust --skip-answered

Always use default answers¶

To skip new questions and use defaults:

copier update --trust --skip-answered --defaults

Hint

This command is non-interactive.

Update to a specific version¶

To update to a specific template version:

copier update --trust --skip-answered --vcs-ref=0.4.2

Automatic update¶

RenovateBot supports updating Copier templates. If your repository is hosted within the salt-extensions organization, you will receive automated PRs for template updates. Review these carefully before merging and ensure CI is passing since Renovate will submit merge conflicts - it adds a PR comment warning about them though.

Hint

When an update introduces a new Copier template question, the automated PR uses the default value. If you want to use a custom one, just perform a manual update.