Boost GitHub Action Performance and Save Money

Contents

• Intro
  • Here’s a list of my GitHub actions:
• Solution
• Result

Intro

While working on component library which I made few weeks ago, I noticed that the GitHub workflow actions I set up were taking nearly 6 minutes to complete.

Here’s a list of my GitHub actions:

• Unit test: (install dependencies, run unit tests)
• Size limit: (install dependencies, build the project, and check the size of build)
• Release: (install dependencies, build the project, create tags, and publish the package)

As you can see, “install dependencies” is common across all these actions and consumes significant time. I researched how to cache these dependencies and found a solution.

Solution

In your GitHub workflow action, before installing dependencies, you can add this step to cache them:

yarn:

- name: Cache Node Modules
        uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          path: |
            ~/.yarn/cache
            node_modules
          key: ${{ runner.os }}-yarn-${{ hashFiles('**/yarn.lock') }}
          restore-keys: |
            ${{ runner.os }}-yarn-

npm:

- name: Cache Node Modules
  uses: actions/cache@v4
  with:
    path: |
      ~/.npm
      node_modules
    key: ${{ runner.os }}-npm-${{ hashFiles('**/package-lock.json') }}
    restore-keys: |
      ${{ runner.os }}-npm-

Result

By implementing this cache system in our GitHub workflow action, I reduced the runtime of our GitHub Actions in this project from 6 minutes to just 2.30 seconds. Not only did this improve speed, but it also reduced our GitHub costs. We’re saving money by enhancing performance!