Brian DouglasTo make your workflows faster and more efficient, you can create and use caches for dependencies and other commonly reused files.
About caching workflow dependencies
GitHub Workflow runs often reuse the same downloaded dependencies from one run to another. For example, package and dependency management tools such as npm and Yarn keep a local cache of downloaded dependencies.
Jobs on GitHub-hosted runners start in a clean virtual environment and must download dependencies each time, causing increased network utilization, longer runtime, and increased cost. GitHub can cache dependencies you frequently use in workflows to help speed up the time it takes to recreate these files.
To cache dependencies for a job, you'll need to use GitHub's cache action. The action retrieves a cache identified by a unique key. For more information, see actions/cache.
Example using the cache action
This example creates a new cache when the packages in the package-lock.json file change or when the runner's operating system changes. The cache key uses contexts and expressions to generate a key that includes the runner's operating system and a SHA-256 hash of the package-lock.json file.
name: Caching with npm
on: push
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Cache node modules
uses: actions/cache@v2
env:
cache-name: cache-node-modules
with:
# npm cache files are stored in `~/.npm` on Linux/macOS
path: ~/.npm
key: ${{ runner.os }}-build-${{ env.cache-name }}-${{ hashFiles('**/package-lock.json') }}
restore-keys: |
${{ runner.os }}-build-${{ env.cache-name }}-
${{ runner.os }}-build-
${{ runner.os }}-
- name: Install Dependencies
run: npm install
- name: Build
run: npm build
- name: Test
run: npm test
To learn more about cache hits and the cache eviction policy, check out the GitHub Documentation.
This is part of my 28 days of Actions series. To get notified of more GitHub Action tips, follow the GitHub organization right here on Dev. Learn how to build action with Node.js
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