Skip uninvolved CI jobs on cross-stack publish pushes

[Copilot]

• Re-check current workflow files and run baseline YAML lint on target CI workflows
• Replace changed-file based publishing detection with non-dev VERSION state detection in each request job (actions.yml, bazel.yml, docker.yml, py.yml, rust.yml)
• Reformat bash logic in each publishing step to 4-space indentation style
• Keep request/status and existing should-run/path-filter logic unchanged; only adjust publishing step logic
• Re-run YAML lint on modified workflows and review diffs for correctness
• Run parallel validation and address feedback

Original prompt

Problem

On push to main, when one of the publishable stacks goes non-dev (i.e. its VERSION.txt is bumped to a non-dev version), _publish.yml is triggered via workflow_run after each of the five CI workflows (Bazel CI, Docker CI, Github/actions CI, Python CI, Rust CI) completes, and waits on all five to complete before publishing (see _publish.yml#L131-L138).

This means a publish of e.g. actions ends up waiting for full Bazel/Docker/Python/Rust CI runs that have nothing to do with the publish, making publishes very slow.

Goal

When stack X is publishing (its VERSION bumped to non-dev) and stack Y is not, Y's CI should internally skip its heavy jobs so its workflow run completes quickly. The waiting structure in _publish.yml stays unchanged — we just make the "uninvolved" CI runs finish in ~30s (only the request job runs).

This must be done purely via an additional step in each CI yaml file — do NOT modify the actions/github/should-run composite action.

Rule

On push events only:

If any "other-stack" VERSION.txt changed in this push AND no "self" VERSION.txt changed, force-skip the heavy jobs in this workflow.

On pull_request events the new step must be a no-op — PR CI continues to behave exactly as today.

Stack ↔ VERSION file ownership

CI workflow	"self" VERSION files
actions.yml	actions/VERSION.txt
bazel.yml	bazel/VERSION.txt, BINS_VERSION.txt
docker.yml	docker/build/VERSION.txt
py.yml	py/VERSION.txt
rust.yml	BINS_VERSION.txt

"Others" for a given workflow = the union of all the above minus that workflow's self set.

Note: BINS_VERSION.txt is "self" for both bazel.yml and rust.yml because _publish.yml lists both Bazel CI and Rust CI under bins' artifact-workflows (_publish.yml#L160-L168).

Implementation

For each of the 5 workflow files (actions.yml, bazel.yml, docker.yml, py.yml, rust.yml):

1. In the request job, after the existing should-run step (which already does actions/checkout@... fetch-depth: 0, see should-run/action.yml#L42-L45), add a new step id: publishing that runs only when github.event_name == 'push'. It uses git diff --name-only HEAD^1 HEAD (matching what should-run itself does on push, see should-run/action.yml#L52-L57) to classify changed files into self_changed and others_changed via a case statement, then sets skip=true to $GITHUB_OUTPUT only if others_changed == true && self_changed == false. Otherwise skip=false.

2. Expose skip-publishing: ${{ steps.publishing.outputs.skip }} in the request job's outputs:.

3. Add && needs.request.outputs.skip-publishing != 'true' to the if: expression of every heavy job in that workflow (i.e. every job that currently gates on fromJSON(needs.request.outputs.run)). Do NOT add it to the status job (which is already pull_request-only) and do NOT add it to the request job itself.

Snippet template (adapt the case arms per workflow)

    - name: Detect cross-stack publish
      id: publishing
      if: github.event_name == 'push'
      shell: bash
      run: |
        # should-run already ran actions/checkout with fetch-depth: 0
        changed="$(git diff --name-only HEAD^1 HEAD)"
        self_changed=false
        others_changed=false
        while IFS= read -r f; do
          case "$f" in
            # <SELF FILES>) self_changed=true ;;
            # <OTHER FILES>) others_changed=true ;;
          esac
        done <<< "$changed"
        if [[ "$others_changed" == "true" && "$self_changed" == "false" ]]; then
          echo "skip=true" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
          echo "Other stack(s) publishing - skipping heavy jobs"
        else
          echo "skip=false" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
        fi

Per-workflow case arms

actions.yml

case "$f" in
  actions/VERSION.txt) self_changed=true ;;
  bazel/VERSION.txt|BINS_VERSION.txt|docker/build/VERSION.txt|py/VERSION.txt)
    others_changed=true ;;
esac

Heavy jobs to gate: actions.

bazel.yml

case "$f" in
  bazel/VERSION.txt|BINS_VERSION.txt) self_changed=true ;;
  actions/VERSION.txt|docker/build/VERSION.txt|py/VERSION.txt)
    others_changed=true ;;
esac

Heavy jobs to gate: test, build, test-gcc, test-macos.

docker.yml

case "$f" i...

</details>



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