Condition Approval in a Codepipeline, ONLY if there is change in the stage.

Is this even possible.?

yes

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How?

First. you can create an EventBridge rule that checks if there are any changes to the input artifact(s) before executing the actions in a particular stage. If there are no changes, the EventBridge rule can trigger a custom action that skips the stage and transitions the pipeline to the next stage.

The pseudocode for this approach would look something like this:

FOR EACH STAGE:
    CHECK IF INPUT ARTIFACT HAS CHANGES
    IF INPUT ARTIFACT HAS NO CHANGES:
        TRIGGER EVENTBRIDGE RULE TO SKIP STAGE
    ELSE:
        EXECUTE STAGE ACTIONS

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Then, you can add a manual approval action to any stage where you want to require explicit approval before proceeding. Instead of using the built-in manual approval action provided by CodePipeline, you can create an EventBridge rule that sends a notification (e.g., SNS topic or Lambda function) when a stage has changes and requires manual approval.

The pseudocode for this approach would look something like this:

FOR EACH STAGE:
    CHECK IF INPUT ARTIFACT HAS CHANGES
    IF INPUT ARTIFACT HAS CHANGES:
        TRIGGER EVENTBRIDGE RULE TO SEND MANUAL APPROVAL NOTIFICATION
        WAIT FOR MANUAL APPROVAL CONFIRMATION
    EXECUTE STAGE ACTIONS

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Finally, the manual approval confirmation can be implemented in various ways, such as:

• Creating an approval workflow using AWS Step Functions or AWS Lambda
• Providing a custom approval mechanism (e.g., a web interface or API) that updates the pipeline's status when manual approval is granted

Key sources:

• Monitoring CodeArtifact
• Amazon EventBridge User Guide
• CodeArtifact event format and example