ci: skip running builds and tests if no code changed #8768

aThorp96 · 2025-05-14T07:15:48Z

Changes

Skip running builds and tests on pull requests if the pull request only changes documentation. From what I can tell, there are no e2e tests in use right now triggered by the Tekton Integration workflow which analyze the markdown docs files except the codegen test which checks to ensure the Pipeline api file was updated, however that should only be updated if the pipelines api is changed in the code. The tests themselves take some time. Also, while the Workflows may be free for compute since they're on GHA, they are still unnecessary and if the e2e tests use any ancillary services which have cost (maybe caching, coverage, image hosting, etc) unnecessary runs at least have the potential of incurring cost.

Submitter Checklist

As the author of this PR, please check off the items in this checklist:

Has Docs if any changes are user facing, including updates to minimum requirements e.g. Kubernetes version bumps
Has Tests included if any functionality added or changed
pre-commit Passed
Follows the commit message standard
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Release Notes

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aThorp96 · 2025-05-14T07:15:59Z

/kind misc

aThorp96 · 2025-05-14T07:17:26Z

Note that the tests will still run on this PR since Github Actions only applies the rules from workflows as defined in the target branch.

aThorp96 · 2025-05-14T07:32:52Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

-on: [pull_request] # yamllint disable-line rule:truthy
+on:
+  pull_request:
+    paths-ignore:


Documentation for the paths-ignore configuration is here

this is a good start I think

aThorp96 · 2025-05-14T07:36:36Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

+on:
+  pull_request:
+    paths-ignore:
+      - 'docs/**' # If the PR only modifies the documentation, there is no need to run builds and code tests


Another option here which which would reduce the runs even more would be to instead use '**.md, since that would include things like README.md or roadmap.md. However I am not sure if that is too liberal a policy. There are a number of other markdown files in the repo for which changes may warrant running tests for reasons I am not privy to.

$ find . -name '*md' | rg -v ./vendor | rg -v ./docs ./.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/feature-request.md ./.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/free-form.md ./.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/promotion-request.md ./.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/bug-report.md ./.github/pull_request_template.md ./cmd ./cmd/entrypoint/README.md ./cmd/nop/README.md ./code-of-conduct.md ./examples/README.md ./hack/README.md ./tekton/README.md ./tekton/release-cheat-sheet.md ./test/custom-task-ctrls/wait-task-beta/README.md ./test/custom-task-ctrls/wait-task-beta/cmd ./test/resolver-with-timeout/README.md ./test/README.md ./topical-ownership.md ./CONTRIBUTING.md ./api_compatibility_policy.md ./roadmap.md ./DEVELOPMENT.md ./README.md ./releases.md

I think **md should be ok but depends on if any of the tests are testing the md files as you mentioned. Once we know that for sure we can use **md. +1 for the current defensive approach.

vdemeester

So I think we have some checks on the docs (like deadlink) or we used to.
Out of curiosity, can we skip some jobs instead ? Worst case, we could have a "docs" workflow with the opposite filter.

aThorp96 · 2025-05-14T08:48:41Z

Yeah if there are docs CI tests we can use a separate filter. Do you know where the docs tests are found or called? I didn't see any inside this file, and outside of verify-codegen it looked like all the tests were unit tests

waveywaves · 2025-05-20T13:24:19Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

-on: [pull_request] # yamllint disable-line rule:truthy
+on:
+  pull_request:
+    paths-ignore:


this is a good start I think

waveywaves · 2025-05-20T13:28:17Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

+on:
+  pull_request:
+    paths-ignore:
+      - 'docs/**' # If the PR only modifies the documentation, there is no need to run builds and code tests


I think **md should be ok but depends on if any of the tests are testing the md files as you mentioned. Once we know that for sure we can use **md. +1 for the current defensive approach.

vdemeester · 2025-05-21T15:46:50Z

/approve
/cc @AlanGreene @afrittoli

tekton-robot · 2025-05-21T15:46:52Z

@vdemeester: GitHub didn't allow me to request PR reviews from the following users: AlanGreene.

Note that only tektoncd members and repo collaborators can review this PR, and authors cannot review their own PRs.

In response to this:

/approve
/cc @AlanGreene @afrittoli

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afrittoli

We have a couple of yaml files under docs

➜ find docs -name '*yaml'
docs/resolver-template/config/demo-resolver-deployment.yaml
docs/resolver-template/test-resolver-template.yaml

Perhaps we could move the yaml linter under a dedicated job along with the markdown linter. Do we do markdown linting? I though we did but cannot find it....

afrittoli · 2025-07-24T13:37:49Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

+on:
+  pull_request:
+    paths-ignore:
+      - 'docs/**' # If the PR only modifies the documentation, there is no need to run builds and code tests


The problem I still see is that the skip here is for the entire set of jobs, and I think we should still run yamllint on the docs.

waveywaves · 2025-08-19T18:51:30Z

Hi @aThorp96, let me know if you have any updates on this one. This is a simple one so was hoping to get it merged soon.

vdemeester · 2025-10-03T08:12:19Z

@aThorp96 needs a rebase 👼🏼

vdemeester · 2025-10-03T08:12:31Z

We can carry this if need be.

AlanGreene · 2025-10-03T08:29:29Z

I think this will block PRs since the jobs are still required.
There's an open GitHub enhancement request related to this: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/44490

The common approach is to skip the jobs using if instead, although it requires additional configuration to get the changed files.

Update: GitHub recommended approach: https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/collaborating-on-repositories-with-code-quality-features/troubleshooting-required-status-checks#handling-skipped-but-required-checks

Warning

If a workflow is skipped due to path filtering, branch filtering or a commit message, then checks associated with that workflow will remain in a "Pending" state. A pull request that requires those checks to be successful will be blocked from merging.

If, however, a job within a workflow is skipped due to a conditional, it will report its status as "Success". For more information, see Using conditions to control job execution.

When a job fails, any jobs that depend on the failed job are skipped and do not report a failure. A pull request that requires the check may not be blocked. To use a required check on a job that depends on other jobs, use the always() conditional expression in addition to needs, see Using jobs in a workflow.

tekton-robot · 2025-10-04T19:41:03Z

The following Tekton test failed:

Test name	Commit	Details	Required	Rerun command
pull-tekton-pipeline-go-coverage-df	`f646f2b`	link	true	`/test pull-tekton-pipeline-go-coverage-df`

vdemeester · 2025-10-06T10:07:02Z

@aThorp96 can you take @AlanGreene's comment into account ?

aThorp96 · 2025-10-06T11:56:42Z

@AlanGreene Thanks for catching that. This should be trivial to do with an external action like dorny/paths-filter. I could write a step to do this with shell as well if we don't want to add an external action dependency. Any preference?

afrittoli · 2025-10-06T14:50:24Z

@AlanGreene Thanks for catching that. This should be trivial to do with an external action like dorny/paths-filter. I could write a step to do this with shell as well if we don't want to add an external action dependency. Any preference?

I don't mind the external dependency, however the last commit on https://github.com/dorny/paths-filter was last year, which could be a red flag. Even if the action is in "problem solved" state, it should feature Dependabot updates or so. New PRs seem to have been ignored. Is there any other alternative?

vdemeester · 2025-10-08T13:50:52Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

 on:
-  - pull_request
+  pull_request:
+    paths-ignore:


@aThorp96 This should be removed then right ?

tekton-robot · 2025-10-08T20:13:01Z

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: vdemeester, waveywaves

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aThorp96 · 2025-10-08T23:05:22Z

Not ready to merge yet. Since I modified non-docs files (esp since I modified the build CI) it should have triggered a build.

vdemeester · 2025-10-09T07:17:34Z

Ah it should have run a yamllint, but nothing more I guess, isn't it ? you changed the CI but to skip the CI..
Ah right, we should not skip a build if only the workflow are modified though, indeed.

/hold

afrittoli · 2025-10-09T08:55:55Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

        only-new-issues: true
        args: --timeout=10m
    - name: yamllint
+      if: ${{ needs.changes.outputs.yaml == 'true' }}


This is fine, however I'm mostly concerned with E2E test. We should skip them if they're not relevant as they take a lot of runners and time. Everything else is small/quick enough that I would not bother touching it at the risk of over-optimising.

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

aThorp96 · 2025-10-09T13:06:55Z

@vdemeester @afrittoli This appears to be working as expected now.

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

aThorp96 · 2025-10-09T13:08:17Z

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

+    - name: Get base depth
+      id: base-depth
+      run: echo "base-depth=$(expr ${{ github.event.pull_request.commits }} + 1)" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT


We could clone the full repository here, but that could take some time and is probably not necessary. This should help the pre-check go much quicker

.github/workflows/ci.yaml

afrittoli · 2025-10-14T08:06:20Z

/retest

github-project-automation bot added this to Tekton Community Roadmap May 14, 2025

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tekton-robot requested review from dibyom and vdemeester May 14, 2025 07:15

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AlanGreene mentioned this pull request Oct 3, 2025

Skip integration tests or other expensive jobs when unnecessary tektoncd/plumbing#2845

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aThorp96 force-pushed the skip-build-tests-when-no-changes branch from bac9ec7 to f646f2b Compare October 4, 2025 18:41

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@aThorp96 This should be removed then right ?

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ci: skip running builds and tests when only changes are markdown

a097c84

aThorp96 force-pushed the skip-build-tests-when-no-changes branch from fe9b6b2 to a097c84 Compare October 20, 2025 20:08

ci: skip running builds and tests if no code changed #8768

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