Behavior of `branches` filter on existing branches
Nobody has claimed this yet.
Assessment
- Difficulty
- 2/5
- Estimated time
- 1-3 hours
- Newbie friendliness
- 78/100
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Activity status
- Active
- Tech stack
- github-actions
- Domain
- ci-cd, documentation
Research direction
Start with the linked workflow syntax article and review the pull_request and push branches filter sections. Update the documentation to explain how existing matching branches behave when a workflow or filter is added, while preserving the surrounding guidance. Done means the reported behavior is clearly documented in both relevant sections.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
Code of Conduct
- I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct
What article on docs.github.com is affected?
https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflows-and-actions/workflow-syntax
What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?
These to parts that describe using a branches filter:
- on.<pull_request|pull_request_target>.<branches|branches-ignore>
- on.push.<branches|tags|branches-ignore|tags-ignore>
Additional information
I just lost about 5 hours trying a large variety of variations and reviewing the docs related to branches filters on GitHub Actions. Here is what I discovered, and I believe this important fact is nowhere in the docs and should be:
When a workflow is put in place that has a `branches` filter, or modified
to add additional branches to an existing `branches` filter, any matching
branches that already existed PRIOR to this modification are NOT eligible
to trigger the workflow.
Only new branches added AFTER the workflow is in place, with matching
branch names, can trigger the workflow.
- Dominant language
- TypeScript
- Stars
- 20.9k
- Forks
- 68.8k
- Avg merge
- 15h 4m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 103
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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