Overview

We are making some changes to when statements December 3rd. We will be adding conditional support to when statements so customers can do things like when: pipelines.git.tag == release. This conditional support allows for customers to run workflows based on pipeline parameters and values.

If you currently have when: always in your workflows you will need to make a change to your config. Always has never been a special value for workflow when, it is a non-empty string and currently evaluates as true. This is equivalent to removing the when key from your workflows.

Shortly the "always" string will be interpreted as an expression and will fail. To avoid your config failing to be processed you must remove the when from your workflows, which is equivalent to the prior behavior.

It is important to note that this is only applicable at the workflow level, and not the step level. You can continue to use the when attribute with the value set to "always". 

Additional Resources

• circleci config validate fails when using pipeline values
• Can I use environment variables in conditional statements?
• Conditional steps in jobs and conditional workflows
• CircleCI Documentation: Using Conditional Logic in Workflows