Bug | ApplicationSets with templated repoURLs are ignored

[jsws]

Describe the bug

When using an ApplicationSet that uses a template for spec.template.spec.sources[].repoURL (like below) the Applications the ApplicationSet generates are not included in the diff calculations.

Expected behavior

The Applications generated by the ApplicationSet should be included in any diff calculations.

Standard output (with --debug flag)

INF ✨ Running v0.2.3 (2026-04-12T14:02:04Z) with:
INF ✨ - using cluster with Argo CD pre-installed
INF ✨ - base-branch: main
INF ✨ - target-branch: jsws-diff-test
INF ✨ - secrets-folder: ./secrets
INF ✨ - output-folder: ./output
INF ✨ - argocd-namespace: argocd
INF ✨ - repo: jsws/test
INF ✨ - timeout: 180 seconds
INF ✨ - debug: true - This is slower because it will do more checks
INF ✨ - files-changed: <auto-detected>
INF ✨ --- Fail on applications with invalid watch-pattern annotation
INF ✨ --- Include applications with no watch-pattern annotation
INF 🔑 Unique ID for this run: b5ad9
INF 🔍 Auto-detecting changed files
INF 🔍 Found 0 changed files in 0s
INF 🤖 Fetching all files for branch (branch: main)
DBG Fetching all files in dir: base-branch
DBG Found 1 yaml files in dir 'base-branch'
INF 🤖 Found 1 files in dir 'base-branch' (branch: main)
DBG In dir 'base-branch' found yaml file: appSet.yaml
INF 🤖 Which resulted in 1 Kubernetes resources (branch: main)
INF 🤖 Which resulted in 1 Argo CD Applications or ApplicationSets (branch: main)
DBG Selecting Application[Sets] for branch (branch: main)
INF 🤖 Selected all 1 Application[Sets] (branch: main)
INF 🤖 Patching 1 Application[Sets] (branch: main)
DBG Skipping source: {{.repoURL}} (repoURL does not match jsws/test) (AppSet: "my-appset [b|appSet.yaml]") (patchType: redirectSource)
DBG Patched 1 Application[Sets] (branch: main)
INF 🤖 Fetching all files for branch (branch: jsws-diff-test)
DBG Fetching all files in dir: target-branch
DBG Found 1 yaml files in dir 'target-branch'
INF 🤖 Found 1 files in dir 'target-branch' (branch: jsws-diff-test)
DBG In dir 'target-branch' found yaml file: appSet.yaml
INF 🤖 Which resulted in 1 Kubernetes resources (branch: jsws-diff-test)
INF 🤖 Which resulted in 1 Argo CD Applications or ApplicationSets (branch: jsws-diff-test)
DBG Selecting Application[Sets] for branch (branch: jsws-diff-test)
INF 🤖 Selected all 1 Application[Sets] (branch: jsws-diff-test)
INF 🤖 Patching 1 Application[Sets] (branch: jsws-diff-test)
DBG Skipping source: {{.repoURL}} (repoURL does not match jsws/test) (AppSet: "my-appset [t|appSet.yaml]") (patchType: redirectSource)
DBG Patched 1 Application[Sets] (branch: jsws-diff-test)
DBG Skipping application because it has not changed (AppSet: my-appset)
INF 🤖 Skipping identical applications between base and target branches
DBG filtering 1 Applications for duplicates
DBG removed 1 duplicates
DBG filtering 1 Applications for duplicates
DBG removed 1 duplicates
INF 🤖 Skipped 1 Application[Sets] in base branch because it has an identical copy in the target branch
INF 🤖 Keeping the remaining 0 Application[Sets] for the base branch
INF 🤖 Skipped 1 Application[Sets] in target branch because it has an identical copy in the base branch
INF 🤖 Keeping the remaining 0 Application[Sets] for the target branch
INF 👀 Found no applications to process in either branch
INF ✨ Total execution time: 0s

Application causing problems (if applicable)

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApplicationSet
metadata:
  name: "my-appset"
  namespace: argocd
spec:
  goTemplate: true
  goTemplateOptions: ["missingkey=error"]
  generators:
    - list:
        elements:
          - repoURL: "https://github.com/jsws/test.git"
  template:
    metadata:
      name: 'my-app'
      namespace: argocd
    spec:
      destination:
        namespace: 'mynamespace'
        server: "https://kubernetes.default.svc"
      project: default
      sources:
        - repoURL: '{{.repoURL}}'
          targetRevision: 'main'
          path: helm/my-chart
          helm: {}

Parameters

✨ Running v0.2.3 (2026-04-12T14:02:04Z) with:
✨ - using cluster with Argo CD pre-installed
✨ - base-branch: main
✨ - target-branch: jsws-diff-test
✨ - secrets-folder: ./secrets
✨ - output-folder: ./output
✨ - argocd-namespace: argocd
✨ - repo: jsws/test
✨ - timeout: 180 seconds
✨ - debug: true - This is slower because it will do more checks
✨ - files-changed: <auto-detected>
✨ --- Fail on applications with invalid watch-pattern annotation
✨ --- Include applications with no watch-pattern annotation

[dag-andersen]

Hi @jsws,

Thank yo for brining this up 👀

Usually a templated repoURL is not a problem, because the field is populated when the ApplicationSet is converted into Applications 😕 But in this case, your ApplicationSet is skipped because argocd-diff-preview can't find any references to the jsws/test repo in the manifest.

If you were using a git-generator instead of a list-generator, I would expect this to work just fine, because then argocd-diff-preview would find a repo reference in the generator itself.

I'm having a hard time figuring out the best way to solve this. Some potential solutions:

1. Always render ApplicationSets where the repoURL field is templated.
2. Always render ApplicationSets where the repo name appears anywhere in the manifest - essentially a simple manifest.contains(repo.name).
3. Replace the argocd-diff-preview/ignore annotation with a more flexible argocd-diff-preview/render annotation that accepts never, always, or changed - in your case you would set it to always.

[dag-andersen]

Hi @jsws,

I ended up implementing option 3 from my previous comment in the new release v0.2.6 🚀

You can now use the new argocd-diff-preview/render annotation to force the ApplicationSet to be processed:

metadata:
  annotations:
    argocd-diff-preview/render: "always"

Could you try this and let me know if it solves the problem?