Any news?

I get global should_skip = true and !fromJSON(needs.pre.outputs.paths_result).api.should_skip = true for some reason. So api job is never skipped

I apologize for the late answer.
For future readers of this issue:

If you run into problems with the paths_filter option, then I would recommend to copy the example 1 multiple times according to your needs: https://github.com/fkirc/skip-duplicate-actions#example-1-skip-entire-jobs

With the example 1, there is no need for any JSON-parsing, instead you can check the global should_skip output.
Normally, the example 1 can be copied and adapted for every sub-job where a skip-behavior is needed.

I am closing this issue because of PR https://github.com/fkirc/skip-duplicate-actions/pull/336/files , please re-open if needed

@fkirc but is it a bug or expected behaviour?

@fkirc but is it a bug or expected behaviour?

Happy to take a look at it if you can provide some logs 👍

@fkirc but is it a bug or expected behaviour?

Happy to take a look at it if you can provide some logs 👍

I had the exact same issue as above. Now I'm using 2 steps without paths_filter as a workaround.

Let‘ reopen the issue because my proposed solution seems to be only a workaround

@fkirc after a lot of testing, I can confirm that the paths_filter option is working great without a workaround.

You should consider the following very relevant statement from the docs when developing a workflow with conditions:

if a merge yields a result that is different from the source branch, then the resulting workflow run will not be skipped.

Since I was not aware of this, I got different results than expected when testing the workflow, e.g. if a job failed in an action-run, the job was executed again in the following run. So I was wondering why it did not work as expected. @jkarstens your issue sounds very similar to me.

What I noticed, that there are two issues with the docs:

Workflow syntax

Example 3 does not use expression syntax:

if: needs.pre_job.outputs.should_skip != 'true' && !fromJSON(needs.pre_job.outputs.paths_result).frontend.should_skip

I'm not 100% sure if this is an issue but following the GitHub docs on workflow-syntax-for-github-actions, I was able to get the skip-check working:

You must always use the ${{ }} expression syntax or escape with '', "", or () when the expression starts with !, since ! is reserved notation in YAML format. For example:

if: ${{ ! startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/') }}

Updated code:

if: ${{ needs.pre_job.outputs.should_skip != 'true' && !fromJSON(needs.pre_job.outputs.paths_result).frontend.should_skip }}

How to Use Skip Check With Required Matrix Jobs?

When trying to combine the Example code 3 paths_filter with the example code from Required Matrix Jobs, it does not work. The query (with expression syntax) if: ${{ needs.frontend.result != 'success' }}, will always match and thus always execute the job.step with exit 1, since the expected result of a skipped job is 'skipped'.

The final and only required check should only fail if the result of a preceding job is 'failure'. Not for 'skipped' or 'success'.

What helped me getting my final required Build Result work was the answers related in the discussion:

• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/26822#discussioncomment-5122101

I hope this helps someone, since I spent much time in investigating. You can find my full build-workflow here.

# This job is the final job that runs after all other jobs and is used for branch protection status checks.
# See: https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/collaborating-on-repositories-with-code-quality-features/about-status-checks
# https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/26822#discussioncomment-5122101
build-result:
  name: Build Result
  needs: [pre_job, core, react, vue, laravel]
  if: ${{ always() }}
  runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  permissions:
    actions: read
  steps:
    - name: Debug build result
      run: |
        echo "pre_job_result: ${{ needs.pre_job.outputs.should_skip }}"
        echo "core_job_result: ${{ needs.core.result }}"
        echo "react_job_result: ${{ needs.react.result }}"
        echo "vue_job_result: ${{ needs.vue.result }}"
        echo "laravel_job_result: ${{ needs.laravel.result }}"

    - name: Check status of all precursor jobs
      if: ${{ contains(needs.*.result, 'failure') || contains(needs.*.result, 'cancelled') }}
      run: exit 1