Conditional Approval gate in deployment jobs in azure pipelines - azure-devops

Question

Since conditional approval doesn't work in azure yaml pipeline i've been trying a workaround using 2 environment in deployment stage, shown in yaml.
using a conditions in job and a variable i want to check if approval required or not
but when i run the pipeline , i see its still asking for approval even though the condition is not satisfied for the deployment job that requires approval. Post approval though the job that required approval skips as expected. I dont understand why its asking for approval.
Are approval executed first for a stage before jobs conditions are evaluated?
Did i miss something in the yaml?
trigger:
- none
variables:
- group: pipelinevariables
# Agent VM image name
- name: vmImageName
value: 'ubuntu-latest'
stages:
- stage: Deploy
displayName: Deploy stage
jobs:
- deployment: DeployWebWithoutApprval
displayName: deploy Web App without approval
condition: and(succeeded(),ne(variables.DEV_APPROVAL_REQUIRED,'true'))
pool:
vmImage: $(vmImageName)
# creates an environment if it doesn't exist
environment: 'app-dev'
strategy:
runOnce:
deploy:
steps:
- script: echo No approval
- deployment: DeployWebWithApprval
displayName: deploy Web App with approval
dependsOn: DeployWebWithoutApprval
condition: and(eq(dependencies.DeployWebWithoutApprval.result,'Skipped'),eq(variables.DEV_APPROVAL_REQUIRED,'true'))
pool:
vmImage: $(vmImageName)
# creates an environment if it doesn't exist
environment: 'app-dev-with-approval'
strategy:
runOnce:
deploy:
steps:
- script: echo requires approval
update :
this works if i define 2 stages and and same set of conditions but that would show 2 stages in build details page which we don't want
Another question is
Can we conditionally insert stage template based on variable value from variable group
stages
​${{ifeq(variables['Policy_Approval_Required'],'true')}}:

Answer 1

Insert template conditionally is supported, you can check the following link: https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/issues/1749. Check the following example:
- ${{ if eq(variables['Build.Reason'], 'PullRequest') }}:
- template: sharedstep.yml#templates
parameters:
value: true

Answer 2

I have had the exact same issue with approval gates and conditions. It is unfortunately not supported as of yet, but it's reported to Microsoft (here). There is also this issue.
Seems like an issue with the order of evaluating approvals vs conditions.