gitlab ci cache no matching files - gitlab-ci

Question

I try to build apk with gitlab runner
When I build apk, I don't want download all build pacakage everytime
so i try to caching .gradle/caches and .gradle/wrappers
following is my gitlab-ci.yml
sdk_build_job
image: myimage:latest
stage: sdk-build
script:
...
cache:
key: gradle-cache
- /root/.gradle/caches
- /root/.gradle/wrapper
but create gradle-cache always make an warning
Creating cache gradle-cache...
WARNING: /root/.gradle/caches: no matching files
WARNING: /root/.gradle/wrapper: no matching files
Archive is up to date!
I don't know why can't find caches and wrapper directory
When i into docker container and find the folders, there were well positioned
root#runner-3d9fa57b-project-4-concurrent-0:~/.gradle# pwd
/root/.gradle
root#runner-3d9fa57b-project-4-concurrent-0:~/.gradle# ls -al
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Dec 28 02:21 .
drwx------ 1 root root 4096 Dec 28 02:19 ..
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Dec 28 02:20 caches
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 28 02:19 daemon
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Dec 28 02:19 native
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 28 02:21 workers
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 28 02:19 wrapper
Please help me.......

Answer 1

That is because cache only works for files and folders INSIDE your project. This is poorly documented on the GitLab website IMHO.
So:
cache:
key: gradle-cache
paths:
- /root/.gradle/caches
- /root/.gradle/wrapper
Still only searches in:
/home/user/yourproject/root/.gradle/caches
/home/user/yourproject/root/.gradle/wrapper
For R, I set R_LIBS_SITE to a local folder inside my project. This allowed me to reuse installed packages. Have a look here.

Answer 2

I banged my head on the same issue.
MS Berends is partially right. Caching is supposed to work for files and folders only already within your project directory, see here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4431
There were supposed to be an option of mounting the cache folder as a volume like
[[runners]]
name = ""
url = ""
token = ""
executor = "docker"
[runners.docker]
tls_verify = false
image = "alpine:latest"
privileged = true
disable_entrypoint_overwrite = false
oom_kill_disable = false
disable_cache = false
volumes = ["/cache", "/root/.gradle:/root/.gradle"]
shm_size = 0
But that does not work neither.
What I ended up doing is the following:
In my .gitlab-ci.yaml, I set the GRADLE_USER_HOME to point on the already mapped cache volume like
GRADLE_USER_HOME: "/cache/.gradle"
Then I passed that gradle home variable to the ./gradlew like
./gradlew $GRADLE_ARGS_CI -g $GRADLE_USER_HOME testDebugUnitTest
Notice the argument named $GRADLE_ARGS_CI. It is set to the following value
GRADLE_ARGS_CI: "--no-build-cache --no-daemon --stacktrace"
The --no-build-cache is necessary if you don't want to reuse the build outputs from previous builds. The --no-daemon is a no brainer because the docker build environment is spawned for every build.
I was able to save 2.5 min on my build time with these changes.

Answer 3

cache:
paths:
- .nuget
before_script:
- dotnet --version
- "[ -f .nuget/NuGet/NuGet.Config ] && rm -rf $HOME/.nuget || rsync -a $HOME/.nuget ./"
- ln -s $(pwd)/.nuget $HOME/.nuget