Have actions *not* run a job if a label is set

[mathomp4]

All,

I think I’m an idiot as I can’t seem to figure this out. Namely, a repo I work with can have both trivial and non-trivial PRs. We have our developers label the trivial ones with a label “0 diff trivial”. What I’d like is to have those PRs not run a rather expensive CI step (takes 30 minutes to build) as changing a README file shouldn’t need that.

So following some other threads here I have something a la:

name: Build Tests
on:

pull_request:

types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, labeled, unlabeled]
jobs:

build_cheap:

name: Build Cheap

runs-on: ubuntu-latest

container: foo

steps:

- name: Cancel Previous Runs

uses: styfle/[email protected]

with:

access_token: ${{ github.token }}

- name: Checkout

uses: actions/checkout@v2

...

build_expensive:

name: Build expensive

if: "!contains(github.event.pull_request.labels.*.name, 'trivial')"

runs-on: ubuntu-latest

container: foo

steps:

- name: Cancel Previous Runs

uses: styfle/[email protected]

with:

access_token: ${{ github.token }}

- name: Checkout GCM

uses: actions/checkout@v2

My guess is my problem is with not knowing GitHub Actions if syntax. I thought:

    if: "!contains(github.event.pull_request.labels.*.name, 'trivial')"

was the right way to say “Run this job step only if the labels do not have trivial”, but tests seem to show this causes an expensive test. 😕

(Note: I might have other issues as well. Since I care about labels, I added to the types of the on: pull_request. I also tried adding the “Cancel Previous Runs” action since I figured we sometimes have to push to our PRs. But I look and it’s not cancelling so…)

[mathomp4]

Sigh. I might have figured this out. I actually decided to read the documentation carefully and:

contains( search, item )

Returns true if search contains item . If search is an array, this function returns true if the item is an element in the array. If search is a string, this function returns true if the item is a substring of search . This function is not case sensitive. Casts values to a string.

After staring at the GitHub API docs, labels is an array, which means contains seems to be looking for a “full string” (as it were) not just something in the string. Thus:

    if: "!contains(github.event.pull_request.labels.*.name, '0 diff trivial')"

seems more correct.

[craigfay]

Try wrapping your condition with the double ${{ }} expression syntax:

if: ${{ !contains(github.event.pull_request.labels.*.name, '0 diff trivial') }}

[rffontenelle]

Awesome. When running a multi-line !contains statement, surrounding with double quotes raised syntax error in the editor. But your suggestion worked just fine.

[skoonin]

for future people, i struggled getting this to work with multiple labels.. the format is:

if: "!(contains(github.event.pull_request.labels.*.name, 'label1') || contains(github.event.pull_request.labels.*.name, 'label2'))"

[DanyC97]

@skoonin thank you so much for sharing the snippet, i spent huge amount of time trying to find out why the heck was not working. Am extremely angry, how much effort will be for a GH eng to update and add a minor example on this one?

thx again 🙌