What is Dependabot?
Dependabot is an automated dependency update tool designed to help developers keep their applications secure and up-to-date. It monitors the dependency manifests and lock files (such as package.json, pom.xml, etc.) in a GitHub repository for new releases of the packages and dependencies they reference.
When Dependabot detects new versions that match the semver constraints specified for a dependency, it automatically opens pull requests against the repository to update the dependency to the latest compatible version. This saves developers the manual work of checking when dependencies need updating, and then raising their own pull requests to get the fixes and features of new releases.
By automating security fixes and version updates in open source dependencies, Dependabot improves developer productivity by reducing manual work, while also making applications more secure by easily keeping dependencies up-to-date against the latest fixes for vulnerabilities.
Dependabot is developed by GitHub and available for free to GitHub users, both for private and public repositories. GitHub also offers a paid Dependabot Enterprise version with additional features like internal registry support, auto-merging of updates, and more.