Run CI based on the check

[Aarsh2001]

Can we run workflow files based on label checks?, if so, how?

[johnboyes]

Hi @Aarsh2001, thanks for raising this. Can you elaborate a little please, and give me an example of what you would like to be able to do? Thanks.

[Aarsh2001]

Sure, so i want my workflow files to run if there is a label present in the PR. So ideally i would like to first check if it is present, if it's true then run the jobs else skip.

Since, i was using label:actions, i found that it required for me to add a label for every commit in the PR. It triggered only once, when the label was added , it didn't trigger for the next commit, unless it was added again.

In such a case, i wanted the label checker to check if the label is present and then run the jobs. Hope this clarifies?

Maybe i could create another workflow file which checks for labels, and then add the result of this as a dependency in other workflows? i don't know😅

[johnboyes]

That helps to clarify, thanks. A couple of initial questions/comments:

• Since, i was using label:actions

  What's the label:actions that you are using, exactly? I'm not familiar.

• My design philosophy for https://github.com/agilepathway/label-checker was to do one thing well:

  check pull requests (PRs) for the presence or absence of specified labels

  By "check", I mean to prevent PRs from being merged unless the specified labels are absent/present.

  If I'm understanding your question right, you are asking more about triggering workflows, right? If that's the case, I wonder if https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/events-that-trigger-workflows#label is useful for you?

Feel free to come back if I've misunderstood!

[johnboyes]

Thinking about it more, I guess your use case is to have something very similar to this repo's label-checker, but which (instead of checking PRs) is a conditional that can be used inside a workflow to determine if the rest of the workflow should run. That's an interesting idea if so, which raises the question of whether this label-checker could/should be extended to offer that. My initial thoughts are that it would be best being a separate repo, as I'm a fan of the "do one thing and do it well" principle. Thoughts?

[Aarsh2001]

Yes, you got it right. Also that we can create one workflow which checks for labels, and make other workflows depend on it, this worked in my case. I used the label-checker.yml and if it was a success other workflows ran. You can add this to the readme of the project maybe, as tricks and tips.😅

[johnboyes]

Nice! Is your repo public? Please share the link to the commit when you've implemented this if so, will be v useful to have a working example I can reference in the README 👍🏻. If it's not a public repo then grateful if you can share a (sanitised) code snippet here, thanks 🙏🏻

[Aarsh2001]

Yes the repository is public, I'll share it after the implementation 🙂, also the code snippet!