Gitlab CI, include rule's if condition is ignored

Question

I've following in .gitlab-ci.yml:

include:
  # env variables
  - local: test.yml
    rules:
      - if: $CI_BUILD_REF_NAME == "dev"
  - local: int.yml
    rules:
      - if: $CI_BUILD_REF_NAME == "qa"
  - local: prod.yml
    rules:
      - if: $CI_BUILD_REF_NAME == "master"

Included files have:

# test.yml
variables:
  ENV: "test"

# int.yml
variables:
  ENV: "int"

# prod.yml
variables:
  ENV: "prod"

When the job is executed, the rules are ignored and all files are included, so the $ENV variable always resolves to prod no matter what value $CI_BUILD_REF_NAME has, since the last included file was prod.yml. What went wrong?

Gitlab server version is 13.9

Answer 1

You can only use the variables that are part of this list - use-variables-with-include

CI_BUILD_REF_NAME cannot be used to evaluate rules in include