Quarto Extensions Updater

August 2, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Test ActionDeploy: Documentation

A GitHub Action that keeps the Quarto extensions of a repository up to date, the way Dependabot keeps dependencies up to date. It scans every _extensions directory, compares each installed extension against the Quarto extensions registry, updates the ones that moved through the Quarto CLI, and opens one pull request per extension with the release notes attached.

Documentation: https://m.canouil.dev/quarto-extensions-updater

Usage

Create a workflow file (e.g., .github/workflows/update-extensions.yml):

name: Update Quarto Extensions

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 * * *" # Daily at midnight UTC
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  update:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7

      - name: Setup Quarto
        uses: quarto-dev/quarto-actions/setup@v2
        with:
          version: "release"

      - uses: mcanouil/quarto-extensions-updater@v2
        with:
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

The Quarto CLI performs the updates, so the setup step is required.

Features

  • One pull request per extension, or a single grouped pull request.
  • Update strategies holding back major or minor changes.
  • Include and exclude lists for pinning individual extensions.
  • Multi-directory scanning for repositories with several Quarto sub-projects.
  • Auto-merge by update type, with the merge method of your choice.
  • Dry-run mode, optionally reporting into a GitHub issue.
  • Reviewers and assignees for team workflows.
  • Compatibility checks against quarto-required, skipping and reporting extensions that need a newer Quarto.
  • Dependabot-style pull request bodies with release notes, grouped by update type.

Every input, output, and behaviour is documented at https://m.canouil.dev/quarto-extensions-updater.

  • Quarto Wizard: a Visual Studio Code extension for managing Quarto extensions.
  • Quarto Extensions: the registry of Quarto extensions this action reads.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Open an issue or a pull request on the GitHub repository, and see contributing for the development setup.

Licence

This project is licensed under the MIT Licence. See the LICENSE file for details.