Continuous integration (CI) triggers cause a pipeline to run whenever you push an update to the specified branches or you push specified tags. Build in triggers can become a powerful tool for your build strategy and the most common scenarios will be explained using the examples below.
Continuous integration triggers:
Branches:
Those will trigger your pipeline when a new commit is performed on your branch. In the scenario below the pipeline will run if code is merged on your main branch or a branch starting from releases like release1, release-1 releases etc. Also the pipeline will not run if a push is commited on uat branch. This is excluded through the exclude keyword.
trigger:
branches:
include:
- main
- release/*
exclude:
- uat
Tags:
Those will trigger your pipeline only when a tag is pushed on your repository. Tags are bound with a commit on a git source control system. In the scenario below the pipeline will get triggered if a tag is pushed following the v.* regex like v.1 , v.something, v.2 etc. Also it will not run if the tag that is pushed starts with uat keyword for example uat-1 will not trigger the pipeline.
trigger:
tags:
include:
- v.*
exclude:
- uat*
Pull Requests:
pr keyword will trigger your pipeline if a pull request is created from a branch and the destination is the noted one. For example if you create a new pull request from mybranch to current branch then the pipeline will get triggered. The pipeline will not trigger if a pull request is created from any branch to uat branch as it is excluded.
trigger:
pr:
branches:
include:
- current
exclude:
- uat
One powerful tool that you can combine with your build strategy is paths. When you specify paths, you must explicitly specify branches to trigger on. You can’t trigger a pipeline with only a path filter; you must also have a branch filter, and the changed files that match the path filter must be from a branch that matches the branch filter.
Paths:
Using a path you specify a directory/folder which will trigger the build. For example you may want only to trigger a build when particular files are changed on your repository. In the below example the pipeline will get triggered if files inside the docs folder change for the branches master and releases*
trigger:
branches:
include:
- master
- releases/*
paths:
include:
- docs
exclude:
- docs/README.md
Microsoft documentation for build strategies:
