How to skip Build without creating Drop and not triggering Release in Azure DevOps

Question

Currently we have a build pipeline which checks if there is a PR for the current branch and if yes it sets a variable and skips the other build steps.

But when this happens the Release still completes as Successful and a empty drop is created. This triggers a release which fails because drop is empty.

This is the dumbed down version of the build pipeline:

    stages:
    - stage: CheckShouldBuildStage
      displayName: Check Should Build
      jobs:
      - job: CheckShouldBuildJob
        displayName: Check Should Build
        steps:
          - powershell: |
                $doBuild = $True
                $sourceBranchName="$env:BUILD_SOURCEBRANCHNAME"
                $buildReason="$env:BUILD_REASON"
                
                # Get PR information for branch
                ...
                
                if ($branchHasPr -eq $True -and $buildReason -ne "PullRequest" -and $buildReason -ne "Manual") {
                   $doBuild = $False
                   Write-Host "Pr Build found, and not the merged PR build. Cancelled build."
                }

                ...

               if ($doBuild -eq $True) {
                  Write-Host "DoBuildVar=YES"
                  Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=DoBuildVar;isOutput=true]YES"     
                } else { 
                  Write-Host "DoBuildVar=NO"
                  Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=DoBuildVar;isOutput=true]NO"
                }
            name: CheckShouldBuildTask
            displayName: Check Should Build
    - stage: BuildAndTest
      condition: 
        eq(
          dependencies.CheckShouldBuildStage.outputs['CheckShouldBuildJob.CheckShouldBuildTask.DoBuildVar'], 
          'YES'
        )
      dependsOn: CheckShouldBuildStage
      displayName: Build and Test
      jobs:
         ...

What should be the correct way to skip a build and not trigger a Release? Is it possible to just disable the creation of an empty drop?

I tried to disable the creation of an empty drop, but all my search results are just people where there was no drop created on mistake.. so this was a dead-end.

I also know I can just fail my build pipeline but this would show up in the stats. As far as I can tell there really only is Success and Fail as a status for a pipeline. So this solution is also not working out for me.

Answer 1

Try and add a Stage condition to only run that stage for a specific branch.

condition: and(succeeded(), eq(variables['Build.SourceBranch'], 'refs/heads/master'))


stages:
- stage: A
             .....

- stage: B
  **condition: and(succeeded(), eq(variables['Build.SourceBranch'], 'refs/heads/master'))**
  jobs:
  - job: B1
    steps:
      - script: echo Hello Stage B!
      - script: echo $(isMain)

Reference : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/conditions?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml

PS : Will refine the answer in future, currently we are still using GUI for releases and we are using this branch filter to control this scenario.