Using an environment variable to skip a job

Build Environment
1

I want to make one of the jobs in my pipeline optional based on an environment variable. The reason is the job takes a long time (e.g. an hour) but it doesn’t need to be done every time - for example, not when re-deploying the same piece of work.

I created an environment variable for the project called DISABLE_ENV_SETUP and set it to 1.

Then I put this in the config.yml:

jobs:
    build_env_setup:
        <<: *defaults
        steps:
            - run:
                name: Skip env set up if disabled
                command: if [ -z "${DISABLE_ENV_SETUP}" ]; then echo "Skipping env set up because of CircleCI environment variable DISABLE_ENV_SETUP."; circleci step halt; fi

Unfortunately this doesn’t work.

I’m not sure if I’m using the environment variable incorrectly or am misunderstanding something. Can anyone help?

2

Making all the environment variables in the project redacted is kind of annoying. It should be a toggle (if it is for a secret or a password).

I think I can’t even echo it can I, it’ll still get redacted? It’s difficult for me to debug why that step is not doing anything.

3

Just noticed my test is doing the opposite of what I want - it’s testing for emptiness.

I’ve changed it to if [ ! -z "${DISABLE_ENV_SETUP}" ];