GitHub Actions run on push to all branches

Question

It's easy to run a GitHub Action on any push or pull request:

# Triggers the workflow on push or pull request events
on: [push, pull_request]

But what if I want to restrict runs to pull requests opened against specific base refs, while allowing runs on all branches?

I thought about this:

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - "*"
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - "develop"
      - "staging"

But it didn't work. I added this Action to a feature branch and GitHub didn't pick it up.

Is there anything wrong with my glob? Why doesn't '*' work?

score 48 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '20 at 18:43

48

I found the Filter pattern cheat sheet after posting the question:

'*': Matches all branch and tag names that don't contain a slash (/). The * character is a special character in YAML. When you start a pattern > with *, you must use quotes.

'**': Matches all branch and tag names. This is the default behavior when you don't use a branches or tags filter.

It happened that the branch I was testing contained a slash (/), so one asterisk (*) wasn't enough. I switched to two asterisks (**) and it works now.

answered Nov 01 '20 at 18:43

Paul Razvan Berg

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You can also drop the `branches` object completely to trigger on events for any branch. – Benjamin W. Nov 01 '20 at 19:18
1

The yml file doesn't compile when I remove `branches`, because `on` is a mapping. – Paul Razvan Berg Nov 01 '20 at 19:19
Don't you also have to merge the .YML file to ALL the branches so the triggers actually work for each named branch? – Polajenko Sep 13 '21 at 16:53
@PaulRazvanBerg Try using `on: {}` – MEMark Dec 19 '21 at 17:40
This works for me: `branches: []` – theartofrain Apr 20 '23 at 04:09

Benjamin W. · Answer 2 · 2022-10-11T15:14:28.493

26

Dropping the restrictions on pushes entirely means triggering on all of them (commits, and also tags):

on:
  push:
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - develop
      - staging

jobs:
  print:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: echo "Running!"

edited Oct 11 '22 at 15:14

answered Aug 25 '21 at 14:35

Benjamin W.

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Note: when you drop `branches`, the workflow will run for tag pushes as well, not only for branch pushes. – Suma Oct 11 '22 at 14:10
@Suma Good point, added a remark to point this out. – Benjamin W. Oct 11 '22 at 15:14

GitHub Actions run on push to all branches

2 Answers2