Ruby custom manager not handling Minimum Version Constraint

[thompson-tomo]

How are you running Renovate?

Self-hosted Renovate CLI

Which platform you running Renovate on?

GitHub.com

Which version of Renovate are you using?

43.64.3

Please tell us more about your question or problem

I want to keep my gemspec dependencies up to date just like gemfiles however the custom manager is not finding updates.

I have the following in my gemspec:

  spec.add_dependency 'opentelemetry-api', '>= 1.7.0'
  spec.add_dependency 'opentelemetry-common', '>= 0.21'

Which is being detected using:

{
      customType: "regex",
      description: "Update dependencies in gemspecs",
      managerFilePatterns: ["**/*.gemspec"],
      matchStrings: [
        ".add_(?<depType>.*dependency)\\s'(?<packageName>.+?)',\\s'>(?<matchType>\\S)\\s(?<depVersion>[0-9.]+)'",
      ],
      datasourceTemplate: "rubygems",
      versioningTemplate: "ruby",
      currentValueTemplate: ">= {{depVersion}}",
      depTypeTemplate: "{{depType}}",
    }

The cli is not detecting any updates where as i would expect opentelemetry-api to detect a 1.8.0 update to.

Note the update is being correctly identified in gemfiles (bundler) with example provided below.

What is interesting is the currentVersion for the custom manager is using the latest, whereas bundler is using the original version.

Logs (if relevant)

Gemfile Logs

{
                 "packageName": "opentelemetry-api",
                 "currentValue": ">= 1.7",
                 "datasource": "rubygems",
                 "versioning": "ruby",
                 "depType": "dependency",
                 "replaceString": ".add_dependency 'opentelemetry-api', '>= 1.7'",
                 "depName": "opentelemetry-api",
                 "updates": [],
                 "warnings": [],
                 "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ruby",
                 "registryUrl": "https://rubygems.org",
                 "sourceDirectory": "api",
                 "changelogUrl": "https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-ruby/opentelemetry-api/v1.8.0/file.CHANGELOG.html",
                 "mostRecentTimestamp": "2026-03-10T19:03:33.889Z",
                 "isAbandoned": false,
                 "currentVersion": "1.8.0",
                 "currentVersionTimestamp": "2026-03-10T19:03:33.889Z",
                 "currentVersionAgeInDays": 1
               }

Bundler Logs

{
                 "depName": "opentelemetry-api",
                 "managerData": {"lineNumber": 13},
                 "datasource": "rubygems",
                 "currentValue": "'>= 1.7'",
                 "lockedVersion": "1.7.0",
                 "updates": [
                   {
                     "bucket": "non-major",
                     "newVersion": "1.8.0",
                     "newValue": "'>= 1.7'",
                     "releaseTimestamp": "2026-03-10T19:03:33.889Z",
                     "newVersionAgeInDays": 1,
                     "newMajor": 1,
                     "newMinor": 8,
                     "newPatch": 0,
                     "updateType": "minor",
                     "isBreaking": false,
                     "isRange": true,
                     "isLockfileUpdate": true,
                     "libYears": 0.47638713555936074,
                     "branchName": "renovate/opentelemetry-api-1.x-lockfile"
                   }
                 ],
                 "packageName": "opentelemetry-api",
                 "versioning": "ruby",
                 "warnings": [],
                 "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ruby",
                 "registryUrl": "https://rubygems.org",
                 "sourceDirectory": "api",
                 "changelogUrl": "https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-ruby/opentelemetry-api/v1.8.0/file.CHANGELOG.html",
                 "mostRecentTimestamp": "2026-03-10T19:03:33.889Z",
                 "isAbandoned": false,
                 "currentVersion": "1.7.0",
                 "currentVersionTimestamp": "2025-09-17T21:54:29.182Z",
                 "currentVersionAgeInDays": 175,
                 "isSingleVersion": true,
                 "fixedVersion": "1.7.0"
               }

Raw log file
test.log

[secustor]

You want to set rangeStrategy to bump

There are updates detected for Bundler as Renovate parses the lockfile to find the locked version and attempts to upgrade that one.

[thompson-tomo]

Ok, will give that a test. Note, I would've expected auto to have automatically bumped it give my gemfile.lock are not committed.

[thompson-tomo]

@secustor i have tested it and it has produced nothing different.

The logs are attached
test.log
with the key below:

{
  "packageName": "opentelemetry-common",
  "currentValue": ">= 0.21",
  "datasource": "rubygems",
  "versioning": "ruby",
  "depType": "dependency",
  "replaceString": ".add_dependency 'opentelemetry-common', '>= 0.21'",
  "depName": "opentelemetry-common",
  "updates": [],
  "warnings": [],
  "sourceUrl": "https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ruby",
  "registryUrl": "https://rubygems.org",
  "sourceDirectory": "common",
  "changelogUrl": "https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-ruby/opentelemetry-common/v0.23.0/file.CHANGELOG.html",
  "mostRecentTimestamp": "2025-10-14T16:56:18.431Z",
  "isAbandoned": false,
  "currentVersion": "0.23.0",
  "currentVersionTimestamp": "2025-10-14T16:56:18.431Z",
  "currentVersionAgeInDays": 149
}

For reference i have added the following to my renovate config:

Additional package rule

{
  matchCategories: ["custom"],
  matchDepNames: ["!ruby"],
  matchFileNames: ["**/*.gemspec"],
  rangeStrategy: "bump",
},

top level setting

rangeStrategy:"bump",

It is not possible to add it to the custom manager as that throws an error.

When i look at the rangeStrategy docs it mentions that

This feature supports caret (^) and tilde (~) ranges only, like ^1.0.0 and ~1.0.0.

Neither of which i am using.

[thompson-tomo]

@secustor Reproduction repo is available at https://github.com/thompson-tomo/renovate-issues which shows the issue of text encoding and rangeStrategy