title: Gitlab CI script: exclude branches
body: <p>I'm trying to improve the project building script, described in YML-file, the improvement itself seems quite trivial, but the idea of accidentally ruining the auto-builds scares me a bit.</p>
  
  <p>Right now there are several branches, version tags and other stuff in the project.</p>
  
  <p>A development branch, not built by the runners would be of use, because copying a huge project somehow between virtual machines to test the build on different platforms is not convenient at all. So, I want to exclude from builds some "prj-dev" branch.</p>
  
  <p>And there we have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>stages:
   - build
   - linuxbuild
  job:
   tags:
   - win2008build
   stage: build
   script:
    # something complex
  
  job1:
   tags:
   - linux
   stage: linuxbuild
   script:
    # something else complex
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I googled and found a solution like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>stages:
   - build
   - linuxbuild
  job:
   tags:
   - win2008build 
   branches:
    except:
      - *dev-only
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But it seems that our pipelines are quite different, the tags are not git tags, they are pipeline tags. So, I'm considering rather to use a config like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>stages:
   - build
   - linuxbuild
  job:
   tags:
   - win2008build 
   except:
     branches:
      - *dev-only
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>...which would mean "build as usual, but not my branch". There are complications in trying it both ways, I'm pretty sure someone should know the recipe for sure.</p>
  
  <p>So, if you please, -- how do I exclude my dev branch without changing the pipelines, config only? Is it possible at all?</p>