Feed - articles on Jamie Tanna | Software Engineer

Week Notes 26#12 🔗

A nice, mostly restorative, week off for my birthday: Definitely feel a lot more reset, having worked on various bits of life admin, and not doing any [...]

Pointing lazy.nvim to a Pull Request 🔗

As I did an update earlier on my Neovim plugins, I noticed a breaking change from codecompanion.nvim hadn't yet been addressed upstream with mcphub.nv [...]

Week Notes 26#11 🔗

A busy week trying to close out my ongoing TODOs ahead of being off next week Sorting through ~50 of my raised-but-not-yet-merged PRs on Renovate Cle [...]

Week Notes 26#10 🔗

A busy week at work After daycare on Tuesday, Cookie was too tired to close her eyes 🥰 (which we're very much a fan of) She was very cutely leaning [...]

My workflow for testing Renovate config changes (2026 edition) 🔗

Over the years, I've been a heavy user of Renovate, and I think it's fair to argue I can describe myself as a "power user". As someone who enjoys the [...]

Does my site's analytics change how I write? 🔗

In the Overcommitted community Discord, we've had some discussion recently about using analytics on our sites. In response to a question about how I u [...]

Week Notes 26#09 🔗

A busy week but less so than last week, thankfully After starting to look into how to sync files with Renovate, I spent a bit of time with Vendir, and [...]

Automagically updating `oapi-codegen` JSON Schema version bumps with Renovate 🔗

A number of releases ago, I introduced a JSON Schema for oapi-codegen's configuration file format, to aid with editor-driven autocomplete. It's best i [...]

How I'm using Local Large Language Models 🔗

Prompted by Joe and Marcus after my last post about AI, I thought I'd share how I'm currently using locally-hosted Large Language Models (LLMs), as I' [...]

Automating the syncing of files between repos with Renovate and Vendir 🔗

For a few years, I've been trying to get a perfect workflow for keeping vendored files in sync between repos. Especially with oapi-codegen, where it's [...]

How and why I attribute LLM-derived code 🔗

As I've written about before, I'm a self-described "cautious skeptic" of AI and Large Language Models, and I'm trying to do more with AI where makes s [...]

Week Notes 26#08 🔗

A particularly busy and overwhelming week - juggling what seemed like two dozen things in and out of work Enjoyed my leftover Miss Korea from Sunday n [...]

Breaking free from GitHub Discussions' limitations 🔗

As I recently wrote about, we use GitHub Discussions for triaging user requests in the Renovate project. This process works really well for the mainta [...]

GitHub Actions' `required` properties aren't always required 🔗

Earlier today on Renovate we noticed that our documentation site had not been deploying for a couple of days. The root cause was down to a quirk of Gi [...]

Lessons learned from `oapi-codegen`'s time in the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund 🔗

As noted in GitHub's post, oapi-codegen was one of the projects taking part in the third GitHub Secure Open Source Fund session. I'd like to take a mo [...]

Week Notes 26#07 🔗

A pretty brain exhausting week with a lot of things going on Nice to have Marcin back, but it's been a lot of extra stuff to keep an eye on A nice mea [...]

Week Notes 26#06 🔗

With Anna off these couple of weeks, we had Tuesday off together, and although we didn't get to the spa, we had a nice lunch out at Maki & Ramen, and [...]

Week Notes 26#05 🔗

It's been a busy week at work with Renovate 43 coming out, with a number of breaking changes As ever with the major release, there's a lot of work ge [...]

Using Ledger, plain text accounting and a touch of AI to fill in my UK tax return 🔗

A few weeks ago, I was reading Siddhant Goel's post about 10 years using plain text accounting, and I found it a really interesting read, but decided [...]

Week Notes 26#04 🔗

A busy week at work, with a number of in-flight features and fixes, especially ahead of a Dev Platform release Been a fun week on Kingshot, burning th [...]

What I've learned building an agent for Renovate config (as a cautious skeptic of AI) 🔗

This article was originally published on the Mend's HackerNoon blog. It's fairly likely that you've heard the term "AI Agent" or "Agentic" used in the [...]

The first 100 days as a Renovate maintainer: the shocking inside view of a popular Open Source project 🔗

Roughly 100 days ago, I joined Mend to work on the Renovate project as a maintainer and community manager. In a vague homage to the style of politics' [...]

Week Notes 26#03 🔗

The Renovate "maintainer dashboard" has been super useful (running locally) to giving me a view of what user-submitted Discussions need a review It's [...]

Authoring Markdown externally and pasting the 'pretty' output into Slack (on Mac) 🔗

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 Related to my post from last year around doing this on Linux, I've been trying to do the sa [...]

Getting access to rich-text data from the clipboard (on Mac) 🔗

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 Related to my post from last year around doing this on Linux, I've been trying to do the sa [...]

Creating a TUI for keeping an eye on GitHub Rate Limits 🔗

In the last week, I've been doing some work to sync Renovate's Discussions to a local SQLite database, so I can provide a better query layer for maint [...]

2025's podcasts in review 🔗

(Aside: I'm considering moving this into a microsite powered by Evidence, like I do with my Music In Review, where I could graph some of this data mor [...]

Week Notes 26#02 🔗

A very cold week, with snow starting on Monday, frozen pipes on Tuesday, and Storm Goretti later in the week We'd planned to have Monday off (as part [...]

Why the Renovate project uses GitHub Discussions as our triage process 🔗

(Note that this is also posted on the Renovate project's Discussions, too) Over the weekend, there has been some good discussion on Hacker News about [...]

Week Notes 26#01 🔗

A weird week being at work between Christmas and New Year's, but nice that we have a long weekend (Thur -> Mon) following it Work has been busy (for r [...]

2025's Music In Review 🔗

This page has now moved into the separate "Music in Review" microsite, for 2025. [...]

2025's Site In Review 🔗

(Aside: I'm considering moving this into a microsite powered by Evidence, like I do with my Music In Review, where I could graph some of this data mor [...]

Week Notes 25#52 🔗

Took a half day on Monday with Anna's family leaving, so I could help out, and pick up Morph Morph was very screamy when I went to collect him - very [...]

Week Notes 25#51 🔗

A busy week ahead of hosting the Dodsons this weekend for Christmas: A lovely weekend hosting the family and catching up We both had Friday off to do [...]

Week Notes 25#50 🔗

My episode on the Open Source Security podcast came out and was a good listen In the run up to Christmas (with Anna's family Christmas next weekend), [...]

I'm on Open Source Security: Updating open source dependencies 🔗

A few weeks ago, I joined the Josh Bressers on the Open Source Security podcast to talk about the joys and difficulties of updating dependencies, and [...]

Week Notes 25#49 🔗

At work, fairly busy continuing with OpenTelemetry, and finalising my agentic Renovate blog post My work to block significant levels of scraping on my [...]

Week Notes 25#48 🔗

Monday was very busy for two reasons: The v2 of Shai Hulud (Sha1-Hulud) worm landed, and so spent a fair bit of the day keeping an eye on internal + [...]

Week Notes 25#47 🔗

Got my post about Open Source and LLMs out, which was good to get it off my mind And was in perfect time for it to be included in Changelog News! Not [...]

Worries about Open Source in the age of LLMs 🔗

On Saturday, I was listening to an episode of Changelog and Friends and Jerod wondered whether Open Source would be needed/used in the world of Large [...]

Week Notes 25#46 🔗

At Batch Bunch, I made some good progress on hacking together an agent for Renovate configuration changes - will see what shape I can get it in and th [...]

November 2025's Desert Island Discs 🔗

Just over a month ago, Carol asked at the pub about what our 8 desert island discs would be. After a month of deliberating, tweaking songs and orderin [...]

Week Notes 25#45 🔗

Had a great chat with Josh on the Open Source Security podcast, talking about dependency management and some of the complexities that are involved wit [...]

Building a more secure npm ecosystem with Mend Renovate 🔗

This article was originally published on the Mend blog. Over this last year, we've seen significant attacks like the Shai-Hulud worm, the Nx build sys [...]

Week Notes 25#44 🔗

A busy work week, in particular continuing towards the next major release of Renovate, this coming Thursday, with a number of things to get in with th [...]

Week Notes 25#43 🔗

A busy, productive, week at work this week, but a couple of slower brain days Was nice to catch up with Nikos and Michael In Kingshot, did well on Ete [...]

Finding missing `releaseTimestamp`s in Renovate 🔗

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 As part of the work we're doing towards the upcoming Renovate 42 to improve minimumReleaseA [...]

Adding type hints to Renovate `config.js` files 🔗

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 I'm a fan of using Renovate's config.js file format for the global self-hosting configurati [...]

Week Notes 25#42 🔗

A cold week, with the boiler replacement: It was a bit more involved than we predicted, so ended up getting a Miss Korea takeaway on Monday, which wa [...]

Week Notes 25#41 🔗

It's been pretty chilly this week - especially with the boiler broken - but glad that it's being fixed this week We've also got the electric blanket [...]

Week Notes 25#40 🔗

With most of my colleagues off for a public holidays, it's been a little quieter at work, but I've managed to still be fairly busy Spent a good chunk [...]

Week Notes 25#39 🔗

A pretty busy week, with my last few days before starting my new job 🚀 and trying to get a few things done first Reminding myself how to post my priv [...]

Creating a `gh` CLI extension for creating GitHub Discussions via category forms 🔗

As part of getting ready for my new job at Mend this week, working on Renovate, I've been thinking a little bit about my workflow. One of the choices [...]

Week Notes 25#38 🔗

A lovely week in sunny Tsilivi in Zakynthos (aka Zante) 🌞 We had such a lovely time, enjoying the sun, reading our books, and swimming in the pool an [...]

Week Notes 25#37 🔗

My first between-jobs week: Generally trying to not push myself and give myself some space, given I'd gotten fairly burned out and my brain has been a [...]

Using `jqp` for interactive queries with `jq` 🔗

I'm not particularly jq-savvy, so when I have to play with it, I find it a little difficult at times. (Yes, LLMs make the process a little less painfu [...]

Determining the digest for a GitHub Action 🔗

When working with GitHub Actions, you may have encountered a Workflow that pins the digest of the Action being used: steps: - uses: release-drafter/ [...]

Setting up `govulncheck` in GitHub Actions with GitHub Code Scanning alerts 🔗

With oapi-codegen, as many other folks in the ecosystem, we've been asked a few times in the past "can you please update this dependency as it has a C [...]

Gotcha: referencing symlinks with `go:embed` result in `irregular file` errors 🔗

Early in 2024, I hit an issue with Go not allowing me to use go:embed. (Aside: this is one of those posts that has been on the backburner and I'm fina [...]

Week Notes 25#36 🔗

My last week at Elastic, chilly with the boiler packing in and a nice weekend with my parents: Didn't sleep particularly well on Sunday night, and wok [...]

Starless: How we accidentally vanished our most popular GitHub repos 🔗

This article was originally published on the Elastic blog. What happens when automation makes a change based on assumptions without confirming the sta [...]

Week Notes 25#35 🔗

In new job: Announced my new job - that I'm joining Mend to work on Renovate (CLI + Enterprise) 🚀 I was able to get it published just before I left f [...]

I'm joining Mend to work on Renovate full-time 🔗

I'm very excited to announce that in September, I'll be joining Mend to work on the Mend Renovate CLI (the Open Source project commonly known as "Reno [...]

Additional lessons learned running Renovate at scale 🔗

I've written before about why I love Renovate for dependency management and some lessons learned self hosting Renovate. One thing I've not yet shared [...]

Week Notes 25#34 🔗

The weather's back to being chilly 🥶 On a dog walk with Cookie, I noticed that the leaves have started falling and being particularly crunchy - autum [...]

Week Notes 25#33 🔗

A fairly busy week with GopherCon UK: Had a nice lunch with Anna's parents on Monday as they brought Cookie back - including opening up the Costco mar [...]

GopherCon UK 2025 🔗

Starting this post as I'm on the way home from a great few days at GopherCon UK, I had a great time. This year's GopherCon UK was a little different t [...]

Clearing Language Server Protocol (LSP) diagnostics in Neovim 🔗

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 I've recently started to use vale for providing some editing improvements on my writing - I [...]

Running Docker images from other architectures, on Linux 🔗

As I'd noted in Creating cross-compiled Docker images from Go binaries, I've been doing some work recently for container image builds. As I'm putting [...]

Week Notes 25#32 🔗

A big week - some big decisions to make, the main one of which is that I'm leaving Elastic 👀 There'll be more details coming soon, but: I'm leaving [...]

Week Notes 25#31 🔗

A busy week with my workshop at Manchester Gophers and Anna's family staying for a long weekend: A busy week doing some final prep for my workshop at [...]

Creating beautiful visualisations of dependency data with Evidence 🔗

In a couple of weeks I'm speaking at GopherCon UK 2025, where I'll be facilitating a tutorial What story does your dependency tree tell you about your [...]

Accessing (accidentally) 'used' tickets in The Trainline's app 🔗

Last night I clicked "mark as used" on one of my tickets in The Trainline app. It was for the first part of a set of advance single tickets, and I wan [...]

Syncing the WAL with SQLite 🔗

When you're working with SQLite, it's possible that you're using the Write Ahead Log (WAL) to improve performance of the database. As part of this, yo [...]

Week Notes 25#30 🔗

The Eton Mess doughnuts at Lidl are very nice 😋 (and expectedly sweet) After last week's "format SQL code blocks inside Markdown files", I've now got [...]

I'm on Changelog and Friends: `#define`: props to astronomer 🔗

This week I was very excited to be on Changelog + Friends for a Changelog++ subscribers edition of #define, the gameshow all about words. I wasn't qui [...]

I'm on Fallthrough: Versioning: We Did It To Ourselves 🔗

Last week I joined Kris Brandow, Matthew Sanabria and Steve Klabnik on the Fallthrough podcast to talk about versioning. This was a fun episode - some [...]

Week Notes 25#29 🔗

Got my hair cut - felt very much needed, as it was getting a lil' unruly, and it's nicer for the video podcasts I've been on recently A busy-ish week [...]

I'm on Fallthrough: Why You're Wrong About REST 🔗

Last week I joined Kris Brandow, Matthew Sanabria and Steve Klabnik on the Fallthrough podcast to talk about REST, Hypermedia and more. This was a goo [...]

Week Notes 25#28 🔗

Although I felt rested after holiday, this week back at work has been busy with a few things going on and definitely felt my mind being distracted and [...]

A few tips for optimising Renovate for multi-team monorepos 🔗

At Elastic, we're using Renovate (as it's the best) to keep a number of internal and external dependencies up-to-date across a lot of repositories in [...]

Week Notes 25#27 🔗

I had a fairly chilled (but toasty) start to the week Had Take a Moment playing a lot this week 🎶 A very bad night with foxes 😠 Found Morph in the g [...]

Week Notes 25#26 🔗

An intense last week of work - before our week off - and a reminder of how much I/we need time off: TV got fixed 🚀 nice to have full audio back Reali [...]

Checking out the branch from a fork in GitHub Actions, when using `pull_request_target` 🔗

This week, I've setting up a GitHub Actions Workflow which will: Look at modified file(s) on the PR Look up the owner of the files (based on an extern [...]

Disabling zsh history for a given shell session 🔗

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 This last week I've been doing a few bits of working with secrets - some of which I've need [...]

Week Notes 25#25 🔗

A very hot week 🥵 Given the fair's at Woodthorpe Park, I've been taking Cookie to Forest Rec (after dropping Anna at the tram) which has been nice So [...]

Week Notes 25#24 🔗

Took Cookie to the vets on Monday - for a checkup and to get her tick removed - and she was good But as we got her vaccine boosters, she's unable to [...]

Week Notes 25#23 🔗

Already June 😳 Had a great time chatting with Tessa on 99 Dev Problems on Monday An end-of-last-week conversation led to significant impact this week [...]

Generating Go code from JSON Schema documents 🔗

Folks familiar with me and my blog will know I'm one of the Core Maintainers for oapi-codegen, and am a big fan of generating code from schemas (in a [...]

Creating cross-compiled Docker images from Go binaries 🔗

I've recently been doing some work to improve the way a couple of Go services have their container images built, so they can be built by humans on eit [...]

Week Notes 25#22 🔗

A lovely Monday at Cowley Manor Experimental Was a nice break from Cookie, until a dog barking and whining in a room a couple of doors down, very muc [...]

Accessing your Renovate Dependency Dashboard, without GitHub/GitLab Issues enabled 🔗

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 When working with Renovate, I heavily recommend having the Dependency Dashboard enabled. It [...]

Generating a Renovate Report from someone else's repo 🔗

As part of Accessing your Renovate Dependency Dashboard, without GitHub/GitLab Issues enabled, I've been trying to represent a Dependency Dashboard ba [...]

Checking the digest for a Docker image, using `crane` 🔗

When working with (Docker/OCI) container images, it's a good best practice to pin your digests. For instance, instead of: FROM ghcr.io/renovatebot/bas [...]

Week Notes 25#21 🔗

A delayed week notes this week, as we were away for the long weekend: Had a random nosebleed on Monday, which wasn't great, and ended up significantly [...]