Clarification on Branch Overrides Behavior in Bamboo YAML Specs

[Changki Kim]

Hello,

I am seeking clarification regarding the actual behavior of the branch-overrides feature in Bamboo YAML Specs.

From the official documentation, it appears that having a single bamboo-specs file (YAML) in the default branch (for example, master) and configuring branch-overrides within it should be sufficient for Plan Branches to automatically apply the respective overrides when created from matching branches.

However, in practice (with Bamboo Data Center 9.6.11), we are experiencing issues:

• Plan Branches created from feature or test branches do not apply the branch-overrides rules defined in the default branch's bamboo-specs file. Instead, only the default configuration seems to be used, and no overrides are in effect.
• Additionally, we receive messages such as "Skipping Specs detection. Specs revision not detected in repository 'xxx' on branch 'feature/YYY'" when there is no bamboo-specs file in the feature branch. This suggests Bamboo might be expecting a specs file to be present in each branch for overrides to work correctly.

 bamboo specs file in master branch -> after scan specs -> Specs configuration updated in history

---

branch-overrides:

  - feature/.*:

      stages: &pr_stages

      - First Stage:

          jobs:

And then I create feature branch with pull request.

---

 feature branch scan specs result is Error. specs file does not exist in feature branch.

And feature branch's plan is same default branch plan.

Skipping Specs detection. Specs revision not detected in repository 'linux' on branch 'feature/JIRA-335-test'. Make sure you have placed your Bamboo Specs in the correct location. You must put either bamboo.yml for YAML Specs or Java Specs Maven project in the bamboo-specs directory under the repository root.

---

This seems to contradict the documentation, which states that a single specs file in the default branch should be sufficient. Could you please clarify:

1. Should the branch-overrides only be defined and managed in the default branch's specs file, with no need for bamboo-specs in every feature or code branch?
2. Is it expected behavior that branch-overrides will not be applied unless a bamboo-specs file also exists in each Plan Branch's code branch?
3. Are there known limitations or specific configuration requirements in Bamboo Data Center which would explain this behavior?

It would be very helpful to have a detailed explanation or an official recommendation on how best to structure Bamboo Specs for Plan Branches with branch-overrides.

Thank you very much for your assistance!

[pBogey]

I guess atlassian is already a dead man walking at this point, so I guess that's why there is no answer to this question yet.

I have the same issue. From the docs:
https://docs.atlassian.com/bamboo-specs-docs/10.2.14/specs.html?yaml#overriding-branch-settings-using-bamboo-specs

Overriding branch settings using Bamboo Specs

In some scenarios, having different configuration on plan branches is not enough. Managing configuration for long-standing branches, managing merge conflicts, or having default configuration on fresh branches is still difficult if you are not using Java Specs. Since Bamboo 7.1.0, the key branch-overrides is available and allows more reusability between plan branches.

So I am expecting that the overrides apply on Bamboo plan branches, just like it does when configuring branches in the UI.

Instead, the observed behaviour in Bamboo 10.2.14 is that the overrides are applied on git branches, not plan branches.

So if my bamboo specs are in the git branch called "main" and I setup a plan branch called "nightly", for example, with a schedule trigger, the branch override will not be applied, because the specs are still on the "main" branch and I don't actually have a "nightly" branch in git.

06-May-2026 10:34:30 None of the override rules matched on the current branch 'main'.
06-May-2026 10:34:31 Bamboo YAML import was successful.