Skipping Build and Live tests using runtime variables

[chidozieononiwu]

What does this PR do?

• Skip Build and live tests run when PR changes include only certain files.

GitHub issue number?

#935

Pre-merge Checklist

• Required for All PRs
  • Read contribution guidelines
  • PR title clearly describes the change
  • Commit history is clean with descriptive messages (cleanup guide)
  • Added comprehensive tests for new/modified functionality
  • Updated servers/Azure.Mcp.Server/CHANGELOG.md and/or servers/Fabric.Mcp.Server/CHANGELOG.md for product changes (features, bug fixes, UI/UX, updated dependencies)
• For MCP tool changes:
  • One tool per PR: This PR adds or modifies only one MCP tool for faster review cycles
  • Updated servers/Azure.Mcp.Server/README.md and/or servers/Fabric.Mcp.Server/README.md documentation
  • Validate README.md changes using script at eng/scripts/Process-PackageReadMe.ps1. See Package README
  • Updated command list in /servers/Azure.Mcp.Server/docs/azmcp-commands.md and/or /docs/fabric-commands.md
  • Run .\eng\scripts\Update-AzCommandsMetadata.ps1 to update tool metadata in azmcp-commands.md (required for CI)
  • For new or modified tool descriptions, ran ToolDescriptionEvaluator and obtained a score of 0.4 or more and a top 3 ranking for all related test prompts
  • For new tools associated with Azure services or publicly available tools/APIs/products, add URL to documentation in the PR description
• Extra steps for Azure MCP Server tool changes:
  • Updated test prompts in /servers/Azure.Mcp.Server/docs/e2eTestPrompts.md
  • 👉 For Community (non-Microsoft team member) PRs:
    • Security review: Reviewed code for security vulnerabilities, malicious code, or suspicious activities before running tests (crypto mining, spam, data exfiltration, etc.)
    • Manual tests run: added comment /azp run mcp - pullrequest - live to run Live Test Pipeline

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds a mechanism to skip build and live test jobs in pull requests when only documentation or metadata files are changed. The script determines which files have changed and conditionally sets Azure DevOps pipeline variables to skip unnecessary build and test stages.

• Introduces a PowerShell script to detect changes in skip-eligible files/directories
• Integrates the skip logic into the pipeline initialization job
• Updates build and live-test job conditions to respect the skip variables

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
eng/scripts/Set-SkipJobVariables.ps1	New script that analyzes changed files and sets variables to skip build/test jobs for documentation-only changes
eng/pipelines/templates/jobs/initialize.yml	Adds a PowerShell task to execute the skip logic during PR initialization
eng/pipelines/templates/jobs/build.yml	Updates condition to skip build job based on SetPRSkipJobVariables output
eng/pipelines/templates/jobs/live-test.yml	Updates condition to skip live test job based on SetPRSkipJobVariables output

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[azure-pipelines]

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[hallipr]

This should be integrated into New-BuildInfo.ps1. That script is responsible for forming the Build, Live Test and Smoke Test matrices. If we decide that there's no build or test matrix for a PR, it should be reflected there.

[hallipr]

In New-BuildInfo.ps1, the function Get-PathsToTest is responsible for returning all of the areas that should be tested because of a change. We could say that Get-PathsToTest returning an empty array / null indicates that there is nothing to test. In a PR, if there's nothing to test, then there's no reason to build either.

So, changes in only skipped files/directories would produce no paths from Get-PathsToTest.
No paths to Test would cause the LiveTest, Build and smoke test matrices to be empty.
The matrix based jobs are already conditional on non-empty matrices:

condition: and(succeeded(), ne(${{ parameters.Matrix }}, '{}'))

[chidozieononiwu]

/azp run mcp - pullrequest

[azure-pipelines]

Azure Pipelines failed to run 1 pipeline(s).