Gitlab CI rules:if:exists wildcard search question

GitLab CI/CD
1

Hello,
I don’t know if what I encountered is a bug or is me just not using it properly.

Problem to solve

I have been using rules:if:exists to run a specific job if any files exists in a specific directory (subdirectories included). In other words, run a specific job if the parent directory exists.

This is how I’ve been using it so far:

job:
  rules:
     - if: '$SOMEVARIABLE == "TRUE"'
       exists:
         - directory/**

However, if I don’t have any file in directory but I have one in directory/sub the job doesn’t trigger.
I have to add a rules: directory/**/** to include subdirectories and make it work.

I thought that ** was used to wildcard recursively and that directory/** was matching any file in directory and in directory’s subdirectories.

I don’t know if it’s intended to work that way or not. I’ve searched the gitlab forum, without any luck. I’ve also read the documentation about rules:if:exists and it doesn’t describe my case where I’m not searching for any file in particular but rather for a directory existence.

How to achieve my goal in a better way? Or is it a bug and the wildcard isn’t working as intended?

Versions

GitLab Self-hosted Runners: 17.4.1
GitLab Free 17.6.1

2

Instead of directory/** try directory/**/*.

Do you wanna match empty directories too?