Merging code to main can trigger deploy of unrelated systems

[roryabraham]

Problem

We are working on releasing a new help site that's hosted in this repo. It deploys whenever code is merged to main. However, its deploy can be triggered even if the changes merged are completely unrelated to the help site, which causes:

1. An unnecessary deploy
2. Noise in slack
3. Noise in the git history
4. Unnecessary bloating of the deploy checklist

Similarly, merging helpsite-related code can trigger deploys of the main NewDot platform, which causes all the same issues, except it's even worse / more noisy.

Why this is important

This wastes engineering and QA time, and may distract others as well.

Solution

Check if a PR only contains changes in the /help directory. If so:

1. Don't add the PR to the main NewDot deploy checklist
2. Don't trigger a NewDot deploy, and instead only deploy the helpsite

If not (changes include files not in the /help directory, don't deploy the helpsite

[roryabraham]

Not a priority for now.

[roryabraham]

Going to pick deploy improvements back up this week. Was holding off last week to avoid disrupting App deploys – we had some big checklists to get through

[roryabraham]

Not going to address this just now. Switching to monthly

[roryabraham]

Not a priority atm

[roryabraham]

No update

[roryabraham]

No update

[roryabraham]

No update

[MelvinBot]

@roryabraham, this Monthly task hasn't been acted upon in 6 weeks; closing.

If you disagree, feel encouraged to reopen it -- but pick your least important issue to close instead.

[melvin-bot]

@roryabraham, this Monthly task hasn't been acted upon in 6 weeks; closing.

If you disagree, feel encouraged to reopen it -- but pick your least important issue to close instead.

[melvin-bot]

@roryabraham, this Monthly task hasn't been acted upon in 6 weeks; closing.

If you disagree, feel encouraged to reopen it -- but pick your least important issue to close instead.

[roryabraham]

Taking this off HOLD and will address it after I come back from OOO to prevent HelpDot test builds on non-HelpDot PRs for the sake of noise reduction.

[roryabraham]

This was addressed in #30315