Prevent current job if future job will not execute

Question

I am interested in the question: Is it possible not to run the current job if the future one will not be executed?

For example, a normal pipeline prepares dependencies, and then runs tests with these dependencies:

A (prepare) -> B (test)

But sometimes job B does not start due to special rules. So the pipeline will look like this:

A (prepare)

Which is absolutely useless, and I would like to prevent this situation.

Real example (shortened):

stages:
  - prepare
  - test


default:
  image: node:20-alpine
  tags: [ devops ]


install:
  stage: prepare
  script:
    - npm install

yamllint:
  stage: test
  rules:
  - if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
    changes:
      paths:
        - ./*/**/*.{yml,yaml}
        - .yaml-lint.json
        - package.json
  script:
    - npm run lint

As you can see, if there are no changes in any xml/yaml files or configuration files, then the yamllint job will not be executed.
So, how to make it so that in such a situation, job install would not run too?

Answer 1

I can't fully accept @Ragnu suggestion because the repository settings require the "Pipelines must succeed". This leads to a situation where, if there are no jobs to run, then "GitLab checks the pipeline status" runs forever.

Therefore, I additionally implemented a stub job that runs if the main jobs are not started.

Result full .yml configuration:

stages:
  - prepare
  - test


default:
  image: node:20-alpine
  tags: [ devops ]


stub:
  stage: prepare
  rules:
  - if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
    changes:
      paths:
        - ./*/**/*.{yml,yaml}
        - .yaml-lint.json
        - package.json
    # Attention to the next line
    when: never
  script:
    - echo "There are no tasks to run."

install:
  stage: prepare
  rules:
  - if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
    changes:
      paths:
        - ./*/**/*.{yml,yaml}
        - .yaml-lint.json
        - package.json
  script:
    - npm install --save-dev

yamllint:
  stage: test
  rules:
  - if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
    changes:
      paths:
        - ./*/**/*.{yml,yaml}
        - .yaml-lint.json
        - package.json
  script:
    - npm run lint