Configuring GitLab Pipeline: Prevent Triggering on gitlab-ci.yml Changes, Trigger on Other File Changes

GitLab CI/CD
1

Problem to solve

How can I configure my GitLab pipeline to prevent triggering when there’s a change in the gitlab-ci.yml file, but trigger it for changes in other files within my repository? Additionally, if there are changes in any file along with changes in gitlab-ci.yml, I want the pipeline to trigger as well.

Configuration

I tried:

workflow:
  rules:
    - changes: 
        - .gitlab-ci.yml
      when: never
      
    - if: ('$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"') ||($CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "push" && $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == 'develop') || ($CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "push" && $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == 'main') || ($CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "push" && $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == 'feature/gcd-21') 
      when: always

It works fine for the two first cases, but if there are changes in the gitlab-ci.yml and other files in the repository, the pipeline does not trigger