ci: prevent changes to markdown files to execute the full test suite

[kitsiosk]

Change Summary

Currently, the Test Cases CI workflow will run even when a push changes only markdown files (e.g., README.md).

With these changes, a push that changes only markdown files will not trigger the workflow, thus speeding up the project's CI and saving compute resources 🌱 (see below for quantity).

Example

Here is an example of the behaviour described above: the commit 9230d86 changed these files: dist/README.md and, when pushed, triggered this workflow run, which ran for ~4 CPU minutes. With the proposed changes, these 4 CPU minutes would have been saved, clearing the queue for other workflows and speeding up the CI of the project, while also saving resources in general.

Note that this is a single example out of 107 examples over the last few months; a lower estimate for the accumulated gain is 5 CPU hours, but the actual number could be higher because our cutoff date is late May and our data go only a few months back.

This only affects the push trigger and not the pull_request trigger, so the actions related to pull requests (opening, pushing new commits on an open PR, closing) will not be affected, only the pushes to branches which do not have an open pull request.

Click here to see all the recent CI runs triggered by markdown files.

commit 9230d86 => run url
commit bbc297a => run url
commit 11abbb2 => run url
commit c22a5dc => run url
commit 5c53e34 => run url
commit c87e4db => run url
commit 71564c6 => run url
commit b7cec41 => run url
commit 08edad2 => run url
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commit 05d41d2 => run url
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commit f53b5e8 => run url
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commit e7f18e8 => run url
commit fc8a5c6 => run url
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commit c2586a2 => run url
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Context

Hi,

We are a team of researchers from University of Zurich and we are currently working on optimizations in GitHub Actions workflows.

Thanks for your time on this.

Kindly let us know (here or in the email below) if you would like to ignore other file types or apply the filter to other workflows/triggers, or if you have any question whatsoever.

Best regards,
Konstantinos Kitsios
[email protected]

Changes proposed:

• Prevent commits that change only markdown files to trigger the full test suite

[vincentfretin]

That seems to be a good change, good for the climate!
We have the npm run test:docs step that checks for broken links, if that script is still executed on pull requests, that's good for me.

[kitsiosk]

Hi @vincentfretin, thanks for your review!

if that script is still executed on pull requests, that's good for me.

Exactly, it will be executed on the PRs.

[dmarcos]

Thanks so much!