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

Is this even possible.?

yes

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

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

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