prevent the bitbucket pipline from tirggering when bitbucket-pipelines.yml is updated

Question

I am new to bitbuckt pipeline. To my node project I have added bitbucket-pipelines.yml in the pipeline I have a step to build and push container to ECR and another step to deploy.

Now each time I make a change to bitbucket-pipelines.yml it build and pushes a new image to ECR and deploys.

I do not what the piepline to trigger when I make changes to bitbucket-pipelines.yml. I only want the pipeline to trigger when I make changes to my application. Am I setting up the project wrong?

my project structure.

.
├── bitbucket-pipelines.yml
├── Dockerfile
├── index.js
├── node_modules
├── package.json
├── package-lock.json
└── README.md

Answer 1

There are a few possible options:

1. Add [skip ci] to your git commit message

Whenever you change the bitbucket-pipelines.yml on its own, add "[skip ci]" (without quotes) somewhere in your Git commit message. This will prevent the pipeline from running when you push to the Bitbucket remote.

Sources and more info:

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/bbkb/how-to-skip-triggering-a-pipeline-build-using-skip-ci-label-1207188270.html
• https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/pipeline-start-conditions/
• https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/push-back-to-your-repository/
• https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/build-test-and-deploy-with-pipelines/

Advantages:

• It's easy and simple.

Disadvantages:

• You have to remember to manually write the "[skip ci]" text. It's easy to forget, or perhaps a new team member will not know about it.

2. Use a Git Hook to automatically modify your git commit message

Write a Git Hook script that will automatically insert the "[skip ci]" text into the Git commit message. The script will have to do something like this:

1. After a local commit, check the latest commit to see which files were changed. Use something like git diff --name-only HEAD~0 HEAD~1
2. If bitbucket-pipelines.yml was the only file changed, modify the commit to insert "[skip ci]" into the commit message.

More info about Git Hooks:

• https://githooks.com/
• https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-hooks
• https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks

Advantages:

• It's fully automatic. No need to manually tag your commit messages.

Disadvantages:

• Creating the script may not be easy.
• Each cloned repo needs to configure the git hooks. See: Can Git hook scripts be managed along with the repository?

3. Make the bitbucket-pipelines.yml check for the file changes

Add a section in the yml build script to check which file was changed in the latest commit.

The script in the yml will have to do something like this:

1. Check the latest commit to see which files were changed. Use something like git diff --name-only HEAD~0 HEAD~1
2. If bitbucket-pipelines.yml was the only file changed, abort the CI build immediately, with an exit 0 statement.

Advantages:

• It's fully automatic. No need to manually tag your commit messages.
• No need to write Git Hook scripts.

Disadvantages:

• The Docker image of your CI build will take 1-5 minutes to load, and then abort itself. This is a bit ineffecient and it will consume some of your build minutes.
• Because the CI build will still run for a few minutes, it will pollute your CI build history with build runs that didn't do anything.

4. Use a Conditional Step with "changesets" and "includePaths"

Define a changesets with an includePaths to execute a step only if one of the modified files matches the expression in includePaths.

pipelines:
  default:
    - step:
        name: build-frontend-artifact
        condition:
          changesets:
            includePaths:
              # only xml files directly under resources directory
              - "src/main/resources/*.xml"
              # any changes in frontend directory
              - "src/site/**"
        script:
          - echo "Building frontend artifact"

Source and more info:

• https://bitbucket.org/blog/conditional-steps-and-improvements-to-logs-in-bitbucket-pipelines