custom cache action using local file system

This modified version can speed up builds significantly as you don't have to rely on a network cache anymore.

IMPORTANT: This will only work when you host your GitHub Runner on your own!

Further benefits compared to using the default network driven github cache action:

• No 5GB cache size limit. Your own hardware sets the boundaries.
• Use as many keys as you like (instead of max 10 keys)
• Keys can be as long till your file system has issue with your file name (instead of 512 characters max)
• Instead of zipping and uploading, we will do zipping and moving. Much faster as some network connections if you are on SSD/RAID.
• Your projects build data actually stays on your own hardware.
• We can add more feature to customize behavior. Lets chat in the issues.
• ... potentially more which I overlook at this very moment ...

Documentation

See "Caching dependencies to speed up workflows".

Usage

Pretty similar to the original cache plugin. You likely can copy & paste your configuration.

Pre-requisites

Create a workflow .yml file in your repositories .github/workflows directory. An example workflow is available below. For more information, reference the GitHub Help Documentation for Creating a workflow file.

Inputs

• path - A list of files, directories, and wildcard patterns to cache and restore. See @actions/glob for supported patterns.
• key - An explicit key for restoring and saving the cache
• restore-keys - An ordered list of keys to use for restoring the cache if no cache hit occurred for key

Outputs

• cache-hit - A boolean value to indicate an exact match was found for the key

See Skipping steps based on cache-hit for info on using this output

Cache scopes

The cache is scoped to the key and branch. The default branch cache is available to other branches.

See Matching a cache key for more info.

Example workflow

name: Caching Primes

on: push

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Cache Primes
      id: cache-primes
      uses: hashbite/github-action-cache-local-fs@main
      with:
        path: prime-numbers
        key: ${{ runner.os }}-primes

    - name: Generate Prime Numbers
      if: steps.cache-primes.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
      run: /generate-primes.sh -d prime-numbers

    - name: Use Prime Numbers
      run: /primes.sh -d prime-numbers

Implementation Examples

Every programming language and framework has its own way of caching.

Creating a cache key

A cache key can include any of the contexts, functions, literals, and operators supported by GitHub Actions.

For example, using the hashFiles function allows you to create a new cache when dependencies change.

  - uses: hashbite/github-action-cache-local-fs@main
    with:
      path: |
        path/to/dependencies
        some/other/dependencies
      key: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }}

Additionally, you can use arbitrary command output in a cache key, such as a date or software version:

  # http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/date.1.html
  - name: Get Date
    id: get-date
    run: |
      echo "::set-output name=date::$(/bin/date -u "+%Y%m%d")"
    shell: bash

  - uses: hashbite/github-action-cache-local-fs@main
    with:
      path: path/to/dependencies
      key: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ steps.get-date.outputs.date }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }}

See Using contexts to create cache keys

Skipping steps based on cache-hit

Using the cache-hit output, subsequent steps (such as install or build) can be skipped when a cache hit occurs on the key.

Example:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2

  - uses: hashbite/github-action-cache-local-fs@main
    id: cache
    with:
      path: path/to/dependencies
      key: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }}

  - name: Install Dependencies
    if: steps.cache.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
    run: /install.sh

Note: The id defined in hashbite/github-action-cache-local-fs must match the id in the if statement (i.e. steps.[ID].outputs.cache-hit)

Contributing

We would love for you to contribute to hashbite/github-action-cache-local-fs, pull requests are welcome! Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

License

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License