Question

Your team's GitHub Actions workflow for a Node.js application takes 12 minutes per run, with roughly 6 minutes spent on 'npm install' downloading dependencies from the registry on every job. The package.json changes infrequently. You must reduce build time and reduce redundant network downloads without maintaining a self-hosted runner or a custom Docker image. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Add the actions/cache action keyed on a hash of package-lock.json to restore the node_modules or npm cache directory between runs

Answer

Upload node_modules as a workflow artifact at the end of each run and download it at the start of the next run using actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact

Answer

Set a concurrency group on the workflow so that only one build runs at a time and dependencies are reused

Answer

Enable a scheduled trigger to pre-warm the runner every hour so dependencies are already installed