GitHub Actions Cache?

[OSA413]

I'd like to know if someone successfully managed to enable caching for gvsbuild since it's taking almost an hour to build it and the app on Rust (the same app for Linux is building in 5 minutes on GitHub Actions).

Any ideas/instructions?

[OSA413]

I guess I can craft something from this example documentation https://github.com/actions/cache/blob/main/examples.md

[OSA413]

I've come up with the following solution that works on windows-2022 runner.

      - name: Set gtk-build-moment-stamp for cache
        run: echo "stamp=$([Math]::Truncate(($(Get-Date).DayofYear / 7)))" | Out-File -FilePath $env:GITHUB_OUTPUT -Encoding utf8 -Append
        id: gtk-build-moment-stamp

      - uses: actions/cache@v4
        id: cache-gtk
        with:
          path: C:/gtk-build/gtk/x64/release
          key: ${{ runner.os }}-gtk-build-${{ steps.gtk-build-moment-stamp.outputs.stamp }}

      - run: py -3.13 -m pip install --user pipx
        if: ${{ steps.cache-gtk.outputs.cache-hit != 'true' }}
      - run: py -3.13 -m pipx ensurepath
        if: ${{ steps.cache-gtk.outputs.cache-hit != 'true' }}
      - run: pipx install gvsbuild
        if: ${{ steps.cache-gtk.outputs.cache-hit != 'true' }}
      - run: gvsbuild build gtk4 libadwaita librsvg
        if: ${{ steps.cache-gtk.outputs.cache-hit != 'true' }}
      - run: echo "C:\gtk-build\gtk\x64\release\bin" | Out-File -FilePath $env:GITHUB_PATH -Encoding utf8 -Append

The first step produces the timestamp (you can customize it but I selected it to update once a week) for the cache to be marked with (because hashFiles doesn't work for files outside of git repo directory).

It creates a 150 MB cache archive that is stored in the repository's action cache. It saves up to 90% of build time.

For more information:

• https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflows-and-actions/dependency-caching
• https://docs.github.com/en/actions/how-tos/manage-workflow-runs/manage-caches

[OSA413]

Caching the whole gtk-build directory turned out to be not optimal, I'll update the answer when I test caching only necessary things.

Upd: corrected the answer.