Smart checks

Dagger will run only the checks that a change affects. To do this, Dagger records each access to workspace files from modules, and tracks which files invalidate which artifacts. We call this provenance.

Today, to run only the affected checks in CI, you must write a script that finds the affected directories from the list of changed files. This is a guess, and it depends on the layout of your project. When the project changes, the script becomes wrong.

With provenance, Dagger has the information that the script must guess. It knows which artifacts each changed file invalidates, so it selects the checks for you. You do not maintain a reverse lookup of your own.