Conditional running of CI workflow jobs

[phil-davis]

When documentation-only changes are made to a PR, we currently let all the workflow jobs run. That uses a lot of resources.

Consider implementing conditional execution of workflows depending on what files changed in a commit. For example, if the only changes are in the changelog folders, then do not bother running unit and acceptance tests, just run the various commit format, PR title etc lint checks.

Possible GitHub action to do this:

https://github.com/dorny/paths-filter

[dj4oC]

Implementation prompt

Problem: Documentation- and changelog-only PRs still trigger the full unit and acceptance test suites in GitHub Actions CI; heavy jobs should be skipped when only non-code files change.

Acceptance criteria:

• A PR changing only files under changelog/ (and/or docs/) skips the js-unit, php-unit, and all acceptance-* jobs.
• Lint/format checks still run on such PRs: semantic-git-messages (Commits), calens (Changelog lint), and lint-pr-title.
• A PR touching source files (e.g. apps/, core/, lib/, *.php, *.js) runs the full job set exactly as today, and the existing full-ci PR-title override keeps working.
• Skipped jobs report as skipped/neutral so branch-protection required checks do not block merge.

Files:

• .github/workflows/ci.yml — add a changes job using dorny/paths-filter that outputs whether only non-code paths changed, then add that output to the if: conditions of js-unit, php-unit, acceptance-api-smoke, acceptance-cli-smoke and the full-ci variants (acceptance-api, acceptance-cli, acceptance-*-notifications/previews/federation/email); leave semantic-git-messages and calens unconditional.
• .github/workflows/lint-pr-title.yml — confirm it remains unconditional so PR-title linting still runs on docs-only PRs.
• .github/workflows/acceptance.yml, js-unit.yml, php-unit.yml — verify no change is needed if gating is applied at the caller if: level in ci.yml.

Constraints:

• Verify end-to-end: open a changelog-only test PR and confirm the heavy jobs are skipped while lint checks run, and a code-change PR still runs everything — do not rely on reading the YAML alone.
• Pin the dorny/paths-filter action to a commit SHA, consistent with the other SHA-pinned actions in these workflows.
• Ensure required status checks still succeed when jobs are skipped (branch protection must not hang on a never-reported check).
• GPG-signed commit + DCO Signed-off-by; rebase onto master before pushing.
• No edits outside .github/.

🤖 Automated by Claude Code

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Generated by Claude Code

[suhailopensource]

Hi @dj4oC can i work on this issue if u guys want it fixed ? do asign it to me in that case.