Add new behavior "Only build if commit message not contains" to Ignored Build Step Git settings in Vercel dashboard 💡

[SugarDarius]

Hi Vercel team 👋🏻

My proposal here is to add a new behavior called Only build if commit message not contains to Ignored Build Step Git settings in Vercel dashboard.

Why such a proposal?

As of today when we connect a repository to Vercel then by default the behavior is set to Automatic meaning a new build is made for each commits. Which is cool but as we can put everything we want in our repositories I don't necessarily want to trigger a new build I change the README.md file for example.

A new behavior called Only build if commit message not contains would be very cool to let users don't trigger a build when pushed changes contains only files not related to a next.js app for example.

Okay but why don't just you use a Run my xxx script behavior?

As of today this what I do 👇🏻
I have a bash script reading the value of VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_MESSAGE and look into it if it contains a specific string:

#!/bin/bash

echo "VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_MESSAGE: $VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_MESSAGE"

if echo "$VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_MESSAGE" | grep -q "\[skip build\]" ; then
    echo "🔺 - Build skipped"
    exit 0

else
    echo "✅ - Build can procceed"
    exit 1
fi

But I think it can be more efficient for Vercel users. Regarding this list of behaviors:

I strongly think it would bring a huge value to automatize it and add a new behavior Only build if commit message not contains and let users define their specific string like [skip build] or [skip vercel build].

I would even go further adding it in the Automatic behavior by default with looking at the commit message and check if it contains for example [skip vercel build] (using the vercel word to be safe). And then let users use the Only build if commit message not contains behavior if they want to customize the specific string we're looking for.

And so what are the benefits?

• It adds a new useful abstraction (it's my own opinion here)
• It avoids to write and add a new script in our repository as Vercel could handle it automatically
• And if we have a script in our repo it will avoid this script to be overridden by mistake
• It will avoid more unnecessary builds and free ressources (I do not have numbers for all Vercel existing builds but based on one of my project on a base of 100 builds I could reduce to 86 builds).
• It will be more eco friendly and sustainable ♻️

I hope my words make sens, thanks for reading me 🙏🏻

Aurélien (SugarDarius)