DevOps / GitHub Actions Interview Questions

How do you use conditional steps with if: in GitHub Actions?

The if: key on a job or step controls whether it executes. It accepts a GitHub Actions expression that evaluates to true or false. When false, the step is skipped and shown as greyed-out in the run log — the job does not fail.

Common patterns:

steps:
  # Run only on pushes to main
  - name: Deploy to production
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' && github.event_name == 'push'
    run: ./deploy.sh

  # Run only when a previous step failed (for alerting)
  - name: Notify failure
    if: failure()
    run: ./send-alert.sh

  # Run after always â even if prior steps failed
  - name: Upload test report
    if: always()
    uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
    with:
      name: test-report
      path: target/surefire-reports/

  # Skip on draft pull requests
  - name: Run expensive checks
    if: github.event.pull_request.draft == false
    run: ./full-test-suite.sh

Status-check functions available in if: expressions:

success() — true if all prior steps succeeded (the default behaviour)
failure() — true if any prior step failed
cancelled() — true if the workflow was cancelled
always() — always true regardless of prior step results

You can also combine expressions: if: success() && github.actor != 'dependabot[bot]'. Note that the ${{ }} wrapper is optional for if: — GitHub automatically evaluates the expression.

Take quiz

Which status-check function in an if: expression ensures a step runs even when previous steps have failed? success()

✗ Try again — not quite right.

always()

✓ Well done — that is correct!

continue()

✗ Try again — not quite right.

force()

✗ Try again — not quite right.

What happens to a step whose if: expression evaluates to false? The job fails with a condition-not-met error

✗ Try again — not quite right.

The step is skipped silently; the job continues

✓ Well done — that is correct!

The entire workflow is cancelled

✗ Try again — not quite right.

All subsequent steps are also skipped

✗ Try again — not quite right.

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