Is there a way to disable auto deploy on specific branch?

[siloneco]

I'm sorry if this has already been asked by others.
I'm developing with 3 branches on private repository, but they all get deployed on all branches and quickly become rate-limited.

Is there a way to configure a particular branch not to deploy automatically?

If it doesn't, I'll give up, so it's no problem. sorry for my bad English. thx.

[coetry]

Hi @siloneco there's no way to turn off deploys per branch, but you can turn off the Git integration altogether with the following config option

{
  "github": {
    "enabled": false
  }
}

If you have three branches named A, B, and C and you only push to B, then only a single deployment should be made for the B branch. If you push to B one time and 3 deployments are made, then there is a bug. Can you confirm that only a single deployment is being made for a single push?

[paymog]

Is this still relevant? The linked docs don't seem to exist anymore.

[utybo]

Seems like the relevant docs have been moved here: https://vercel.com/docs/project-configuration#git-configuration/github-enabled

[amyegan]

Thanks for sharing the updated link. There is also a new git.deploymentEnabled option that lets you disable auto-deployment on individual branches.

[jacob-mako]

I think this is the working link: https://vercel.com/docs/concepts/projects/project-configuration/git-configuration

[siloneco]

Thank you for quick reply. I tried it in the develop branch and waited a minute after pushing it, and it didn't do anything. I think I can do something with this feature. Thank you so much!

[Allisson-Lima-Dev]

In file vercel.json

{
"git": {
"deploymentEnabled": {
"main": false
}
}
}

[amyegan]

Thanks for sharing this answer! Using the new git.deploymentEnabled option is a perfect solution for disabling a specific branch.

[stavgafny]

Yes, using deploymentEnabled you can now disable a specific branch. See docs

[coreyward]

So if I want to disable all branches other than my main branch, I would just add 1.20892582e64 pre-generated combinations of 40 character strings to my vercel.json? 🤨

[coreyward]

Is there still no way to only trigger preview builds for pull requests? Netlify has offered this for an eternity. I don't need Vercel running doomed builds for branches that are not ready to at least open a PR for.

[sambacha]

Is there still no way to only trigger preview builds for pull requests? Netlify has offered this for an eternity. I don't need Vercel running doomed builds for branches that are not ready to at least open a PR for.

You can enable the "Ignored Build Step" field by referring to the documentation of this feature. If the command returns "0", the build will be skipped. If, however, a code "1" or greater is returned, then a new deployment will be built.

So bash script with

exit 1;

Will let the build proceed.

This is quite honestly absurd, you have to wonder how much billable hours vercel gets out of this, the feature is obviously easy to implement considering the existing git integration.

[coreyward]

To be honest, I don't know what any of this means. Ignored build steps? Where do I write said shell script? Why is it a shell script and not, um, JS? How does my shell script get access to the Github repo to know whether or not a branch is involved in a pull request?

This is quite honestly absurd, you have to wonder how much billable hours vercel gets out of this, the feature is obviously easy to implement considering the existing git integration.

I think you're onto something here.

[leerob]

Please see the latest selected answer - this is possible without needing an ignored build step!

[coreyward]

@leerob I want to only run builds on pull requests and the main branch. There doesn't seem to be any way of doing that.

[leerob]

Yes, you can disable deployments for specific branches through vercel.json:

{
  "git": {
    "deploymentEnabled": {
      "my-branch-name": false
    }
  }
}

https://vercel.com/docs/projects/project-configuration/git-configuration

[coreyward]

The opposite would be far more useful: an option to only run builds on specified branches. But we still also need a way for Vercel to only run builds on pull requests, too. Building arbitrary branches that are for speculative work is not useful, and asking devs to update vercel.json to add the current branch each time they create one is unrealistic.

[NickG-NZ]

Agreed, absurd that the default is to build for every push to every branch.. It should be vastly simpler to configure to only build on push (or merge request) to specific branches.
Yes we can configure which branches build on push with a bash script (with practically zero documentation), but come on...

[hwrdtm]

Can we use patterns (eg. release-*) for the keys under git.deploymentEnabled?

[symphony]

How do I disable it for every branch except main?

[amyegan]

If you want to prevent all but production deployments, you can use Ignored Build Step and select the "only build production" option. Or you can use a customized script to allow only specified branches, like

#!/bin/bash

echo "VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF: $VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF"

if [[ "$VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF" == "main" || "$VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF" == "staging"  ]] ; then
  # Proceed with the build
    echo "✅ - Build can proceed"
  exit 1;

else
  # Don't build
  echo "🛑 - Build cancelled"
  exit 0;
fi

https://vercel.com/guides/how-do-i-use-the-ignored-build-step-field-on-vercel