Status check for a multi-stage workflow
If you run a multi-stage workflow with status checks in branch protection rules, you might found that skipped jobs are treated as "passed". That is, if you have a workflow with a chain of three dependent jobs A -> B -> C. When B fails and C is skipped, it still counts as passed if we only check job C.1 This behavior may make us merge broken code. We could list all A, B, and C jobs as required jobs, but this is tedious and could not be done in dynamic matrix. But there is a workaround. We could add an additional job that is always executed and bails out when the required job is not successful. The branch protection rules can depend on this job to determine whether this workflow is successful or not.
jobs:
stage1:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# Run steps...
stage2:
needs: stage1
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# Run steps...
stage3:
needs: stage2
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
# Run steps...
# CI conclusion for GitHub status check
# Adapted from https://brunoscheufler.com/blog/2022-04-09-the-required-github-status-check-that-wasnt
CI:
needs: stage3
if: always()
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- run: |
if [[ ${{ needs.stage3.result }} == "success" ]]; then
echo "Tests passed"
exit 0
else
echo "Tests failed"
exit 1
fi