How to exclude jobs using a combination of inputs?

[lelegard]

Hi,

I may have misunderstood the way matrix.include works. The following workflow gives the following error:

The workflow is not valid. .github/workflows/release.yml (Line: 53, Col: 9):
Unrecognized named-value: 'matrix'.
Located at position 1 within expression: matrix.build_arch && matrix.build_distro

The error "Unrecognized named-value: 'matrix'" is only in an if: expression. If I remove the if: and unconditionally run on all platforms, matrix.build_arch and matrix.build_distro are correctly interpreted in an echo commands.

The purpose is a release worflow which can produce binaries compiled for x64 and/or arm64 on several Linux distros using containers (only two, ubuntu and debian, in the example). The workflow is manually triggered (workflow_dispatch).

The set of architectures and containers to use are specified as UI inputs. A container image named none means "don't build on that distro". I tried to use a distinct boolean input to build/don't-build on each distro but I hit the limit of 10 inputs. So, I had to use one input only per distro, for image name and build/don't-build boolean.

name: Release

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      build_x64:
        type: boolean
        description: 'Build Intel x64 packages'
        default: true
      build_arm64:
        type: boolean
        description: 'Build Arm64 packages'
        default: true
      ubuntu_image:
        type: choice
        description: 'Ubuntu docker image'
        default: 'ubuntu:latest'
        options:
        - none
        - ubuntu:latest
        - ubuntu:25.04
      debian_image:
        type: choice
        description: 'Debian docker image'
        default: 'debian:trixie'
        options:
        - none
        - debian:latest
        - debian:trixie

jobs:
  linux:
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        distro: [ubuntu, debian]
        arch: [x64, arm64]
        include:
        - arch: x64
          build_arch: ${{ inputs.build_x64 }}
          runner: ubuntu-latest
        - arch: arm64
          build_arch: ${{ inputs.build_arm64 }}
          runner: ubuntu-24.04-arm
        - distro: ubuntu
          build_distro: ${{ inputs.ubuntu_image != 'none' }}
          image: ${{ inputs.ubuntu_image }}
        - distro: debian
          build_distro: ${{ inputs.debian_image != 'none' }}
          image: ${{ inputs.debian_image }}

    name: Build on ${{ matrix.distro }} for ${{ matrix.arch }}
    if: ${{ matrix.build_arch && matrix.build_distro }}
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.runner }}
    steps:
    - run: |
        echo "distro=${{ matrix.distro }}, image=${{ matrix.image }}"
        echo "arch=${{ matrix.arch }}, runner=${{ matrix.runner }}"
        echo "build_arch=${{ matrix.build_arch }}, build_distro=${{ matrix.build_distro }}"

To avoid if:, I tried this:

        exclude:
        - build_distro: false
        - build_arch: false

but got this error

Error when evaluating 'strategy' for job 'linux'.
.github/workflows/release.yml (Line: 52, Col: 11): Matrix exclude key 'build_distro' does not match any key within the matrix,
.github/workflows/release.yml (Line: 53, Col: 11): Matrix exclude key 'build_arch' does not match any key within the matrix

[lelegard]

It seems to be a duplicate of #37883. Using matrix in jobs.job.if seems forbidden. Everybody repeatedly complain about it, no one can explain why this limitation. Such a pain...

[github-actions[bot]]

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