Proposed changes

Change Summary

Currently, the Test 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 f384074 changed these files: website/docs/visual-testing/service-options.md and, when pushed, triggered this workflow run, which ran for ~2 CPU hours. With the proposed changes, these 2 CPU hours 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 12 examples over the last few months; a lower estimate for the accumulated gain is 24 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.

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
konstantinos.kitsios@uzh.ch

Types of changes

• Polish (an improvement for an existing feature)
• Bugfix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)
• Documentation update (improvements to the project's docs)
• Specification changes (updates to WebDriver command specifications)
• Internal updates (everything related to internal scripts, governance documentation and CI files)

Checklist

• I have read the CONTRIBUTING doc
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• I have added the necessary documentation (if appropriate)
• I have added proper type definitions for new commands (if appropriate)

Backport Request

• This change is solely for v9 and doesn't need to be back-ported
• Back-ported PR at #XXXXX

Reviewers: @webdriverio/project-committers