feat: exclude stacks from the selection with `!` patterns by badmintoncryer · Pull Request #1920 · aws/aws-cdk-cli

badmintoncryer · 2026-09-01T03:13:02Z

Fixes #1908
Resolves #758

Implements @mrgrain's snippet from #1909. (That PR could not be reopened after the force push, so this is a new one.)

picomatch.parse().negated splits the patterns into positives and negations, and the selection is OR over the positives, AND over the negations. Every pattern is compiled exactly as picomatch defines it - a negated matcher accepts the stacks that survive it - so nothing is ever stripped or rewritten, and !(A|B) stays an extglob.

$ cdk ls '!Prod/Canary' '!Prod/StackB'   # before: all 4 stacks
DevStack
Prod/StackA

Two changes from the snippet:

scan().negated reports true for !!Stack where picomatch matches it as a positive, and slicing the ! prefix off turns '!' into an empty pattern that picomatch refuses to compile. parse().negated is the flag the matcher itself uses, and compiling the raw pattern sidesteps the rest.
positives.length === 0 meaning "everything" would make patterns: [] select every stack, which select behavior: none in cloud-assembly.test.ts pins down. Now it needs at least one negation.

Also:

Patterns without ! are unchanged and no existing test needed changes. The new selection is always a subset of the old one, so the change only ever narrows: anyone leaning on the union bug, e.g. 'Prod/*' '!Prod/Canary', will stop deploying Canary. That is the point of the fix, but say the word if you'd rather have it warn for a release first.
The does not exist warning compared each raw pattern against the selection it produced. With subtraction in play that turns false ('Stack1' '!Stack1' would warn that Stack1 does not exist), so patterns are now checked against the assembly, negations with the ! off - which also gets destroy '!stack1' its casing suggestion.
Excluding a dependency of a selected stack does not drop it, --exclusively still does. Test + README.

toolkit-lib only, so deploy / diff / synth / destroy / ls all get this.

Checklist

This change contains a major version upgrade for a dependency and I confirm all breaking changes are addressed
- Release notes for the new version:

By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution is made under the terms of the Apache-2.0 license

codecov-commenter · 2026-09-01T03:24:21Z

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 91.33%. Comparing base (5b77563) to head (966fcf6).

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@@           Coverage Diff           @@
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  Branches     1721     1721           
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Stack patterns are matched with picomatch, which reads a leading `!` as a negation. Every pattern was matched on its own and the results unioned, so `!A !B` asked for "not A" and "not B" and got back the union of the two, which is every stack there is. Patterns are now split into the ones that select and the ones that exclude: the selection is the union of the former, minus everything the latter match. picomatch's own `scan()` draws the line, so `!(A|B)` stays the extglob it is and `!!A` stays a positive.

mrgrain

Hmm. Not as easy as I hoped.

mrgrain · 2026-09-01T12:33:55Z

+$ cdk deploy 'PipelineStack/Prod/**' '!PipelineStack/Prod/Canary'
+```
+
+The selection is the union of the other patterns, minus everything the exclusions match; `!(...)` is extglob syntax, not an exclusion. When you only pass exclusions, they apply to every stack in the app. Note that `--all` cannot be combined with patterns, so use `**` when you want to spell out the starting point. Stacks that a selected stack depends on are still added to the deployment even if you excluded them; pass `--exclusively` (`-e`) to keep them out.


"!(...) is extglob syntax, not an exclusion." this is probably correct, but not sure what it is supposed to mean 😅

"When you only pass exclusions, they apply to every stack in the app." similar here.

But don't worry about it. I'll adjust this before me merge.

Thank you so much...

Negation status now comes from parse().negated, the flag matching itself uses, instead of counting `!`s in the scan() prefix. Every pattern is compiled raw - a negated matcher accepts the stacks that survive it - so nothing is stripped any more. Slicing the prefix off broke on a bare `!`, which left an empty pattern that picomatch refuses to compile.

mrgrain

some small performance optimizations please, otherwise great!

mrgrain · 2026-09-02T12:58:25Z

+ * stack but that one. No patterns at all still selects nothing.
+ */
+function matcherFor(patterns: string[]): (hierarchicalId: string) => boolean {
+  const matchers = patterns.map(pattern => ({ negates: picomatch.parse(pattern).negated, matches: picomatch(pattern) }));


looks like picomatch(pattern, undefined, true).state is the same result as picomatch.parse(pattern) so we can save a parse here.

@badmintoncryer I think this is still missing?

…tion-exclusion-patterns

mrgrain · 2026-09-04T09:02:46Z

+  const positives: picomatch.Matcher[] = [];
+  const negatives: picomatch.Matcher[] = [];
+  for (const pattern of patterns) {
+    (picomatch.parse(pattern).negated ? negatives : positives).push(picomatch(pattern));


Suggested change

(picomatch.parse(pattern).negated ? negatives : positives).push(picomatch(pattern));

const parsed = picomatch(pattern, undefined, true);

(parsed.state.negated ? negatives : positives).push(parsed);

I think this saves a parse?

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badmintoncryer force-pushed the fix/758-stack-selection-exclusion-patterns branch from 735e910 to e94875c Compare September 1, 2026 07:03

badmintoncryer changed the title ~~feat(toolkit-lib): exclude stacks from the selection with !~~ feat: exclude stacks from the selection with ! patterns Sep 1, 2026

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revert unrelated comment rewording

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badmintoncryer marked this pull request as ready for review September 2, 2026 12:40

Merge branch 'main' into fix/758-stack-selection-exclusion-patterns

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refactor

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Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/main' into fix/758-stack-selec…

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…tion-exclusion-patterns

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feat: exclude stacks from the selection with `!` patterns - #1920

feat: exclude stacks from the selection with `!` patterns#1920
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	(picomatch.parse(pattern).negated ? negatives : positives).push(picomatch(pattern));
	const parsed = picomatch(pattern, undefined, true);
	(parsed.state.negated ? negatives : positives).push(parsed);

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