PRs is "waiting for status to be reported" for workflows that never fire off because of the paths-ignore - hangs the PR

[darrenge]

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We set up our GitHub Actions CI where we do not want our workflows to run when the only files changed are documentation (.md). We used "paths-ignore" in the ci yml. The GH action works as designed where it won't run in that case on push. However, the PRs require workflows to complete before merged, the PR still expects the workflow to be ran and it won't allow the merge because it is waiting for the CI workflow to finish. The GH Action never was fired off (by design) so it is just stuck and we have to "By pass branch protections" to make the merge happen. Kind of hard to fully explain ... maybe you got it.

If there is a PR with ONLY md files in the PR, then it should NOT require the ci workflow to run.
If there are non .md files in the PR, then it runs the workflow like it should.

You can see a PR we set up: microsoft/garnet#98 It just had a single .md file so it is hung because checks never finish and you get: "Garnet - Build and Test (ubuntu-latest, net6.0) Expected — Waiting for status to be reported" . That status will never be reported because the workflow never got fired off due to the paths-ignore: in the ci yml (https://github.com/microsoft/garnet/blob/main/.github/workflows/ci.yml)

Only way to get around this is to bypass branch protections and just do the merge.

Also, I have talked to other people doing this and their CI work flows do it as expected. If there is something in the paths-ignore, then those workflows should not be required to merge, which makes me think there is a bug or some setting we are missing

Maybe we have our Branch Protection Rule on main set up wrong?