How to trigger a build only if changes happen on particular set of files

Question

How do I tell Jenkins/Hudson to trigger a build only for changes on a particular project in my Git tree?

Answer 1

While this doesn't affect single jobs, you can use this script to ignore certain steps if the latest commit did not contain any changes:

/*
 * Check a folder if changed in the latest commit.
 * Returns true if changed, or false if no changes.
 */
def checkFolderForDiffs(path) {
    try {
        // git diff will return 1 for changes (failure) which is caught in catch, or
        // 0 meaning no changes 
        sh "git diff --quiet --exit-code HEAD~1..HEAD ${path}"
        return false
    } catch (err) {
        return true
    }
}

if ( checkFolderForDiffs('api/') ) {
    //API folder changed, run steps here
}