This action allows caching dependencies and build outputs to improve workflow execution time.

Tests

See "Caching dependencies to speed up workflows".

• Added support for caching from GHES 3.5.
• Fixed download issue for files > 2GB during restore.
• Updated the minimum runner version support from node 12 -> node 16.

• Increased the cache size limit to 10 GB.
• Added support for multiple paths, glob patterns, and single file caches.

- name: Cache multiple paths
 uses: actions/cache@v3
 with:
 path: |
 ~/cache
 !~/cache/exclude
 key: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }}

• Increased performance and improved cache sizes using zstd compression for Linux and macOS runners
• Allowed caching for all events with a ref. See events that trigger workflow for info on which events do not have a GITHUB_REF
• Released the @actions/cache npm package to allow other actions to utilize caching
• Added a best-effort cleanup step to delete the archive after extraction to reduce storage space

Refer here for previous versions

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.

If you are using this inside a container, a POSIX-compliant tar needs to be included and accessible in the execution path.

• 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

• 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

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.

name: Caching Primes
on: push
jobs:
 build:
 runs-on: ubuntu-latest
 steps:
 - uses: actions/checkout@v3
 - name: Cache Primes
 id: cache-primes
 uses: actions/cache@v3
 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

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

See Examples for a list of actions/cache implementations for use with:

• C# - NuGet
• D - DUB
• Deno
• Elixir - Mix
• Go - Modules
• Haskell - Cabal
• Haskell - Stack
• Java - Gradle
• Java - Maven
• Node - npm
• Node - Lerna
• Node - Yarn
• OCaml/Reason - esy
• PHP - Composer
• Python - pip
• Python - pipenv
• R - renv
• Ruby - Bundler
• Rust - Cargo
• Scala - SBT
• Swift, Objective-C - Carthage
• Swift, Objective-C - CocoaPods
• Swift - Swift Package Manager

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: actions/cache@v3
 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: actions/cache@v3
 with:
 path: path/to/dependencies
 key: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ steps.get-date.outputs.date }}-${{ hashFiles('**/lockfiles') }}

See Using contexts to create cache keys

A repository can have up to 10GB of caches. Once the 10GB limit is reached, older caches will be evicted based on when the cache was last accessed. Caches that are not accessed within the last week will also be evicted.

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@v3
 - uses: actions/cache@v3
 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 actions/cache must match the id in the if statement (i.e. steps.[ID].outputs.cache-hit)

Cache version is unique for a combination of compression tool used for compression of cache (Gzip, Zstd, etc based on runner OS) and the path of directories being cached. If two caches have different versions, they are identified as unique cache entries. This also means that a cache created on windows-latest runner can't be restored on ubuntu-latest as cache Versions are different.

Example: Below example will create 3 unique caches with same keys. Ubuntu and windows runners will use different compression technique and hence create two different caches. And build-linux will create two different caches as the paths are different.

jobs:
 build-linux:
 runs-on: ubuntu-latest
 steps:
 - uses: actions/checkout@v3
 - name: Cache Primes
 id: cache-primes
 uses: actions/cache@v3
 with:
 path: prime-numbers
 key: primes
 - name: Generate Prime Numbers
 if: steps.cache-primes.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
 run: ./generate-primes.sh -d prime-numbers
 
 - name: Cache Numbers
 id: cache-numbers
 uses: actions/cache@v3
 with:
 path: numbers
 key: primes
 - name: Generate Numbers
 if: steps.cache-numbers.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
 run: ./generate-primes.sh -d numbers
 
 build-windows:
 runs-on: windows-latest
 steps:
 - uses: actions/checkout@v3
 - name: Cache Primes
 id: cache-primes
 uses: actions/cache@v3
 with:
 path: prime-numbers
 key: primes
 - name: Generate Prime Numbers
 if: steps.cache-primes.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
 run: ./generate-primes -d prime-numbers

We would love for you to contribute to actions/cache, pull requests are welcome! Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

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