Using both rules:changes and rules:if on gitlab ci

Question

I have a variable named $DEPLOY_STAGE for each job, and it's default value is false. I want to create a rule, where if either the variable is set to true or there was a change in the directory corresponding with the job, then the job is added to the pipeline. I used the following rule on each job:

rules:
  - changes:
      - "job/**/*"
    when: on_success
  - if: '$DEPLOY_STAGE == "true"'
    when: on_success

The changes part works fine, but when I manually run the pipeline and set a single variable to true, all jobs are added to the pipeline. What could be the cause of this problem?

Answer 1

Just to put it out there, if there is no push on a job, changes automatically evaluate to true not false.

Be careful with this one. I triggered a build storm by manually triggering (clicking run pipeline in the GUI) our top level job to see what would happen.

Reference: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#ruleschanges

Specifically:

You should use rules: changes only with branch pipelines or merge request pipelines. You can use rules: changes with other pipeline types, but rules: changes always evaluates to true for new branch pipelines or when there is no Git push event. Pipelines like tag pipelines, scheduled pipelines, and manual pipelines, all do not have a Git push event associated with them. In these cases, use rules: changes: compare_to to specify the branch to compare against.