This action allows caching dependencies and build outputs to improve workflow execution time.
Two other actions are available in addition to the primary
cache
action:
See "Caching dependencies to speed up workflows".
The cache backend service has been rewritten from the ground up for improved performance and reliability. actions/cache now integrates with the new cache service (v2) APIs.
The new service will gradually roll out as of February 1st, 2025. The legacy service will also be sunset on the same date. Changes in these release are fully backward compatible.
We are deprecating some versions of this action. We recommend upgrading to version v4
or v3
as soon as possible before February 1st, 2025. (Upgrade instructions below).
If you are using pinned SHAs, please use the SHAs of versions v4.2.0
or v3.4.0
If you do not upgrade, all workflow runs using any of the deprecated actions/cache will fail.
Upgrading to the recommended versions will not break your workflows.
Read more about the change & access the migration guide: reference to the announcement.
~/
home folder on ubuntu-latest
.SEGMENT_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT_MINS
. Default is 10 minutes.See the v2 README.md for older updates.
Create a workflow .yml
file in your repository's .github/workflows
directory. An example workflow is available below. For more information, see 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 from the execution path.
If you are using a self-hosted
Windows runner, GNU tar
and zstd
are required for Cross-OS caching to work. They are also recommended to be installed in general so the performance is on par with hosted
Windows runners.
key
- An explicit key for a cache entry. See creating a cache key.path
- A list of files, directories, and wildcard patterns to cache and restore. See @actions/glob
for supported patterns.restore-keys
- An ordered multiline string listing the prefix-matched keys, that are used for restoring stale cache if no cache hit occurred for key.enableCrossOsArchive
- An optional boolean when enabled, allows Windows runners to save or restore caches that can be restored or saved respectively on other platforms. Default: false
fail-on-cache-miss
- Fail the workflow if cache entry is not found. Default: false
lookup-only
- If true, only checks if cache entry exists and skips download. Does not change save cache behavior. Default: false
SEGMENT_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT_MINS
- Segment download timeout (in minutes, default 10
) to abort download of the segment if not completed in the defined number of minutes. Read morecache-hit
- A string value to indicate an exact match was found for the key.
key
.See Skipping steps based on cache-hit for info on using this output
The cache is scoped to the key, version, and branch. The default branch cache is available to other branches.
See Matching a cache key for more info.
Restoring and saving cache using a single actionname: Caching Primes on: push jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - name: Cache Primes id: cache-primes uses: actions/cache@v4 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
The cache
action provides a cache-hit
output which is set to true
when the cache is restored using the primary key
and false
when the cache is restored using restore-keys
or no cache is restored.
name: Caching Primes on: push jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - name: Restore cached Primes id: cache-primes-restore uses: actions/cache/restore@v4 with: path: | path/to/dependencies some/other/dependencies key: ${{ runner.os }}-primes . . //intermediate workflow steps . - name: Save Primes id: cache-primes-save uses: actions/cache/save@v4 with: path: | path/to/dependencies some/other/dependencies key: ${{ steps.cache-primes-restore.outputs.cache-primary-key }}
Note You must use the
cache
orrestore
action in your workflow before you need to use the files that might be restored from the cache. If the providedkey
matches an existing cache, a new cache is not created and if the providedkey
doesn't match an existing cache, a new cache is automatically created provided the job completes successfully.
With the introduction of the restore
and save
actions, a lot of caching use cases can now be achieved. Please see the caching strategies document for understanding how you can use the actions strategically to achieve the desired goal.
Every programming language and framework has its own way of caching.
See Examples for a list of actions/cache
implementations for use with:
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@v4 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 "date=$(/bin/date -u "+%Y%m%d")" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT shell: bash - uses: actions/cache@v4 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.
Skipping steps based on cache-hitUsing the cache-hit
output, subsequent steps (such as install or build) can be skipped when a cache hit occurs on the key. It is recommended to install missing/updated dependencies in case of a partial key match when the key is dependent on the hash
of the package file.
Example:
steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - uses: actions/cache@v4 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 inactions/cache
must match theid
in theif
statement (i.e.steps.[ID].outputs.cache-hit
)
Cache version is a hash generated for a combination of compression tool used (Gzip, Zstd, etc. based on the runner OS) and the path
of directories being cached. If two caches have different versions, they are identified as unique caches while matching. This, for example, means that a cache created on a windows-latest
runner can't be restored on ubuntu-latest
as cache Version
s are different.
Example The workflow 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.Pro tip: The list caches API can be used to get the version of a cache. This can be helpful to troubleshoot cache miss due to version.
jobs: build-linux: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - name: Cache Primes id: cache-primes uses: actions/cache@v4 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@v4 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@v4 - name: Cache Primes id: cache-primes uses: actions/cache@v4 with: path: prime-numbers key: primes - name: Generate Prime Numbers if: steps.cache-primes.outputs.cache-hit != 'true' run: ./generate-primes -d prime-numbersKnown practices and workarounds
There are a number of community practices/workarounds to fulfill specific requirements. You may choose to use them if they suit your use case. Note these are not necessarily the only solution or even a recommended solution.
Please note that Windows environment variables (like %LocalAppData%
) will NOT be expanded by this action. Instead, prefer using ~
in your paths which will expand to the HOME directory. For example, instead of %LocalAppData%
, use ~\AppData\Local
. For a list of supported default environment variables, see the Learn GitHub Actions: Variables page.
Thank you for your interest in this GitHub repo, however, right now we are not taking contributions.
We continue to focus our resources on strategic areas that help our customers be successful while making developers' lives easier. While GitHub Actions remains a key part of this vision, we are allocating resources towards other areas of Actions and are not taking contributions to this repository at this time. The GitHub public roadmap is the best place to follow along for any updates on features we’re working on and what stage they’re in.
We are taking the following steps to better direct requests related to GitHub Actions, including:
We will be directing questions and support requests to our Community Discussions area
High Priority bugs can be reported through Community Discussions or you can report these to our support team https://support.github.com/contact/bug-report.
Security Issues should be handled as per our security.md.
We will still provide security updates for this project and fix major breaking changes during this time.
You are welcome to still raise bugs in this repo.
The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License
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