Build watch paths

When you connect a git repository to Pages, by default a change to any file in the repository will trigger a Pages build. You can configure Pages to include or exclude specific paths to specify if Pages should skip a build for a given path. This can be especially helpful if you are using a monorepo project structure and want to limit the amount of builds being kicked off.

Configure paths

To configure which paths are included and excluded:

1. Go to the Workers & Pages in the Cloudflare dashboard.

   Go to Workers & Pages

2. Find your Pages project.

3. Go to Settings > Build > Build watch paths. Pages will default to setting your project's includes paths to everything ([*]) and excludes paths to nothing ([]).

The configuration fields can be filled in two ways:

• Static filepaths: Enter the precise name of the file you are looking to include or exclude (for example, docs/README.md).
• Wildcard syntax: Use wildcards to match multiple paths. You can specify wildcards at the start or end of your rule.

Wildcard syntax

A wildcard (*) matches zero or more characters, including path separators (/). This means a single * at the end of a path pattern will match files in nested subdirectories as well. For example:

• docs/* matches docs/README.md, docs/guides/setup.md, and docs/guides/advanced/config.md.
• *.md matches README.md, docs/README.md, and src/content/guide.md.
• * alone matches all files in the repository.

For each path in a push event, build watch paths will be evaluated as follows:

• Paths satisfying excludes conditions are ignored first
• Any remaining paths are checked against includes conditions
• If any matching path is found, a build is triggered. Otherwise the build is skipped

Pages will bypass the path matching for a push event and default to building the project if:

• A push event contains 0 file changes, in case a user pushes an empty push event to trigger a build
• A push event contains 3000+ file changes or 20+ commits

Examples

Trigger builds for specific directories (monorepo)

If you want to trigger a build only when files change within specific directories, such as project-a/ and packages/. Because * matches across path separators, this includes changes in nested subdirectories like project-a/src/index.js or packages/utils/lib/helpers.ts.

• Include paths: project-a/*, packages/*
• Exclude paths: ``

Exclude a directory from triggering builds

If you want to trigger a build for any changes, but want to exclude changes to a certain directory, such as all changes in a docs/ directory (including nested paths like docs/guides/setup.md).

• Include paths: *
• Exclude paths: docs/*

Trigger builds for a specific filetype

If you want to trigger a build for a specific file or specific filetype, for example all .md files anywhere in the repository.

• Include paths: *.md
• Exclude paths: ``

Trigger builds for a directory but exclude a subdirectory

If you want to trigger a build for changes in src/ but want to ignore changes in src/tests/.

• Include paths: src/*
• Exclude paths: src/tests/*