How to use Dependabot to resolve dependencies

Overview

Dependabot is a tool that aids in the automatic upgrading of applications. It analyzes the files in our application, identifies outdated requirements, and opens new pull requests if there are any missing or out-of-date dependencies. The user then approves these pull requests.

Working with Dependabot

These are the steps we follow to work with Dependabot:

1. We log in to our GitHub account and open any one of our repositories.
2. Then, we go to the "Insights" tab and click on the "Dependency Graph" option. 
3. Once in that window, we click the "Dependabot" tab and enable Dependabot.

4. After enabling Dependabot, we add a config file named dependabot.yml.

Note: The dependabot.yml file contains the dependencies that need to be checked.

5. Dependabot will now automatically find and replace all the outdated dependencies. The user can view the pull requests and either merge or delete them.

Advantages of Dependabot

There are many advantages of using Dependabot:

• It reduces the human effort that's required to identify outdated or missing packages.
• It reduces the effort needed to replace those packages.
• It doesn't approve the update requests without user acknowledgment.
• It's easy to enable and use Dependabot.