Excluding paths from trigger not working as expected

[simonvane]

I have the following trigger in my yml build file.

trigger:
  branches:
    include:
    - master
    - develop
  paths:
    exclude:
    - readme.md
    - Deploy/*

The way I would expect that to work is that I get a build if the branch is master or develop unless the only files changed are readme.me or are file in the Deploy folder.

Is my expectation correct?

I made a commit to develop where the only changes were in Deploy but this resulted in a build.

I am wondering if I'm misinterpreting the documentation.

Thanks.

[yesoreyeram]

Have u tried removing the * ? (In your exclude paths, Just specify Deploy/)

[simonvane]

I need to do a bit more digging but I think this is actually working fine and I just need a similar section for PRs i.e.

pr:
  branches:
    include:
    - '*'
  paths:
    exclude:
    - readme.md
    - Deploy/*

I don't think the /* is required in Deploy/* as you suggest but I think it makes the intent clearer.

[ghost]

I have the same issue exactly and I don't want to have the same setting in PR trigger as I want PR triggers to work from - Deploy/*.
Any information about what's happening?

[simonvane]

So I think there are a few issues of usability here but it looks like things are working as intended even if that turns out to be a bit unhelpful.

The usability issues are:

• Having to duplicate the inclusions / exclusions in trigger and pr.
• pr doesn't work Azure DevOps git repos (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/yaml-schema?view=azure-devops&tabs=schema#pr-trigger), we have to specify it in branch policy instead which leads to confusion and duplication.
• There is no error or warning to tell you that pr doesn't work in Azure DevOps so lots of time gets wasted diagnosing issues that turn out to be expected behaviour.

[ghost]

I found out that in my case what was causing the pipeline to run when I expected otherwise is having - path/to/excluded/* instead of - path/to/excluded in exclude list in trigger. I didn't have to change pr.

[ghost]

And yes trying to diagnose the problem was really hard.

[simonvane]

@AElharouny Are you using Azure DevOps repos?

[ghost]

No we're using Github.

[stale]

In order to consolidate to fewer feedback channels, we've moved suggestions and issue reporting to Developer Community. Sorry for any confusion resulting from this move.

[Raffaello]

i have the same issue with the following configuration more or less:

trigger:
  branches:
    include:
    - master
  paths:
    exclude:
    #- .gitignore
    - .github/
    - README.md
    - appveyor.yml
    - LICENSE
    - codecov.yml

  tags:
    include:
    - '*'

pr:
  branches:
    include:
    - master
  paths:
    exclude:
    #- .gitignore
    - .github/config.yml
    - README.md
    - ./appveyor.yml
    - LICENSE

the pipeline is in a azure-pipelines folder, i have also tried, using a ../ relative path, as i (wrongly?) guessed the root path might be the azure-pipelines folder.
From the documentation there are few bits that are not really clear.

basically what i would like to achieve is really simple as: if i change a readme, i do not want to trigger the CI ...... but it is always triggered..
not sure i think i might have missed something, but at the same time i think should be fairly more straight-forward, or it is slightly buggy and the paths.exclude is being overridden somehow?

---

from my extra little investigation, the triggers and commit checkout are not just working on the single commit, at least for PR, but is like accumulative for all the commits, this imply for eg:

• 1st commit that should trigger the PR
• 2nd commit that should not

the result is:
the triggers detect the change as a whole, so triggering the pipeline is like if it was 1 "merged" commit of 1st and 2nd and then the resulting file changes are valid for the PR trigger.

i guess.
For me is not really the expected behavior and should be more on fine grained PR commit

reported also here:
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/1046653/azure-pipelines-triggers-pathsexclude-in-pr-is-not.html

---

just need a clarification