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0. Caching dependencies

Date: 2021-05-21

Status: Accepted

Context

actions/setup-node is the 2nd most popular action in GitHub Actions. A lot of customers use it in conjunction with actions/cache to speed up dependencies installation.
See more examples on proper usage in actions/cache documentation.

Goals & Anti-Goals

Integration of caching functionality into actions/setup-node action will bring the following benefits for action users:

Decrease the entry threshold for using the cache for Node.js dependencies and simplify initial configuration
Simplify YAML pipelines because no need additional steps to enable caching
More users will use cache for Node.js so more customers will have fast builds!

We will add support for NPM and Yarn dependencies caching.
As the first stage, we won't support custom locations for package-lock.json, yarn.lock files and action will work only when files are located in repository root.

We don't pursue the goal to provide wide customization of caching in scope of actions/setup-node action. The purpose of this integration is covering ~90% of basic use-cases. If user needs flexible customization, we should advice them to use actions/cache directly.

Decision

Add cache input parameter to actions/setup-node. For now, input will accept the following values:
- npm - enable caching for npm dependencies
- yarn - enable caching for yarn dependencies
- '' - disable caching (default value)
Cache feature will be disabled by default to make sure that we don't break existing customers. We will consider enabling cache by default in next major release (v3)
Action will try to search package-lock.json or yarn.lock (npm 7.x supports yarn.lock files) files in the repository root and throw error if no one is found
The hash of found file will be used as cache key (the same approach like actions/cache recommends)
The following key cache will be used ${{ runner.os }}-npm-${{ hashFiles('<package-lock-path>') }}
Action will cache global cache:
- Npm (retrieved via npm config get cache)
- Yarn 1 (retrieved via yarn cache dir)
- Yarn 2 (retrieved via yarn config get cacheFolder)

Example of real use-cases

Npm package manager:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2
  - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
    with:
      node-version: '14'
      cache: npm

Yarn package manager:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2
  - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
    with:
      node-version: '14'
      cache: yarn

Release process

As soon as functionality is implemented, we will release minor update of action. No need to bump major version since there are no breaking changes for existing users. After that, we will update starter-workflows and GitHub Action documentation.

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