Is there a way to trigger a Bamboo build on changes to a specific sub-directory of a git repository?

[Julie Pickhardt]

Our project is a sub-project/sub-directory in a much larger git repository. At this time, moving our sub-project to its own repo is unfortunately not an option.

We would like to trigger our builds based on changes to our sub-project, only, not on any change to the entire repository. Is this possible? Has anyone else run into this situation and solved it?

Thank you very much for any help you can offer.

Julie Pickhardt

[Jason Monsorno · Accepted solution]

Configure the plan, goto the Repositories tab and select your repository.

Scroll down to the bottom and expand Advanced Options.

There is a dropdown for "Include / exclude files", select "Include only changes that matches to the following pattern" then a textbox will appear underneath it where you can specify a regular expression to express your subdirectory. Example that works for me:

sub/directory/*

[Julie Pickhardt]

I actually had to enter the regex like this:

sub\/directory\/.*

But that worked perfectly. Thank you so much for your help!

[helmerm]

I have a Vision subdirectory under the git root and set the include to .*/Vision/.*, but the build is never triggered. Where is the pattern executed? Can I see the output somewhere?

[Christopher Bartlett]

I have tried this with a linked repository and a straight stash repository and neither has worked.  I have tried adding the sub directory as <foldername>\/* and <foldername>/* and that has not worked either. Is there something that I am missing here?

I have also tried and actual fully qualified regular expression as per the Bamboo documentation and it does not pick up the check in.  Is there a way to see the output?  I have a build that is just a straight trigger on the entire repository and it works every time without fail.

[Csaba Kiss]

I agree with Christopher's comment.  I have tried all combinations in v7.2.2 similar to what he described and nothing seems to work.  What am I missing?

Any help?

[Hubert Cross]

This only works for plan-level repositories if you want to restrict the builds of a plan. It's worth mentioning that plan-level repositories are deprecated, so we don't know how much longer they will work in future versions of bamboo ...

[Cathal King]

There are examples provided here that you might find useful:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BAMBOO052/_planRepositoryIncludeExcludeFilesExamples

[NullPointer]

It is 2022 now. Is this nasty workaround still the solution for the OP's question? 

[Config Manager]

I was pondering exactly the same problem and so this is great :-) When I tried it I didn't have to escape the forward clashes - i.e sub/directory/.* worked fine.

A follow on question that someone may be able to answer...

I tried to define the include pattern with a variable like this :

${bamboo.appname}/.*

but first it wouldn't accept this as a valid regexp, and when I escaped the $ { and } it seemed to take it literally, i.e. it didn't substitute the variable. Anyone know if a variable can be used, and how?