Skip expensive PR pipelines for doc-only and metadata-only changes

[Copilot]

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• You've included unit or integration tests for your change, where applicable.
• You've included inline docs for your change, where applicable.
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Stop queueing expensive PR validation when every changed file is documentation or repo metadata.

Description

The non-code path filters were already in place for aspnetcore-ci, aspnetcore-quarantined-pr, and aspnetcore-always-green, but two gaps meant they didn't fully take effect.

• License filename casing (ci-public.yml, quarantined-pr.yml, report-green.yml): the filters listed LICENSE.TXT / THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.TXT, which don't match the files on disk. Corrected to LICENSE.txt / THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt so those edits actually skip CI and instead trigger the always-green job that Build Analysis depends on.

  paths:
    exclude:
    ...
    - LICENSE.txt
    - THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt

• Template tests (template-tests-pr.yml): include-only filters meant a markdown edit under src/ProjectTemplates, src/Components, or src/Mvc still queued Helix template tests. Added exclude: '**/*.md', matching what components-e2e-tests.yml already does.

• Stale comment (ci-public.yml): the header still claimed the pipeline has no path exclusions. Replaced with a note describing the doc-only skip and the report-green.yml fallback.

components-e2e-tests.yml needed no change — its include list plus existing **/*.md exclusion already prevents the proposed non-code paths from triggering it.

Verification is static: the pipeline YAML was parsed and the resolved pr.paths filters were compared against the list in the issue and the actual filenames in the repo. Azure Pipelines evaluates these filters service-side, so end-to-end behavior can only be confirmed after merge.

• Fixes [Infrastructure] Limit the CI configurations that run when not making code changes #68999

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The YAML changes are small, consistent with Azure Pipelines path-matching rules, and the corrected filenames match the actual repo casing.

Pull request overview

This PR tightens Azure Pipelines PR path filtering so expensive validation pipelines are skipped when a PR only changes documentation or selected repository-metadata files, while still ensuring the required “always green” pipeline runs for Build Analysis.

Changes:

• Fixes license file path exclusions to match on-disk casing (LICENSE.txt, THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt) so doc/metadata-only changes actually skip the expensive PR pipelines.
• Prevents template-tests-pr.yml from running Helix template tests for markdown-only changes by excluding **/*.md.
• Updates ci-public.yml header comments to accurately describe the doc/metadata-only skip behavior and the report-green.yml fallback.

File summaries

File	Description
.azure/pipelines/template-tests-pr.yml	Adds pr.paths.exclude: '**/*.md' so markdown-only edits don’t queue template Helix tests.
.azure/pipelines/report-green.yml	Corrects excluded license filenames’ casing so report-green can reliably cover doc/metadata-only PRs.
.azure/pipelines/quarantined-pr.yml	Corrects excluded license filenames’ casing so quarantined PR validation can be skipped for doc/metadata-only PRs.
.azure/pipelines/ci-public.yml	Corrects excluded license filenames’ casing and updates comments to reflect the doc/metadata-only skip + report-green fallback behavior.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 4/4 changed files
• Comments generated: 0
• Review effort level: Lite

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[dotnet-policy-service]

Hey @dotnet/aspnet-build, looks like this PR is something you want to take a look at.