android - Gitlab CI gradle dependency cache

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I'm building android on Gitlab CI and downloading dependencies each time is annoying. I tried caching:
$HOME/.gradle/
$HOME/.gradle/caches/
$GRADLE_HOME/caches/
$HOME/.m2/
.gradle/
build/
app/build/
The 26594th iteration of my .gitlab-ci.yml is here. I've installed gradle in my build environment because without caching gradlew downloads it every time, which takes even more time. The image I use for building is here. My CI server startup script can be found here. I assume that, if caching works, I won't see a list of my dependencies downloading on every build.
Build log:
gitlab-ci-multi-runner 0.7.2 (998cf5d)
    Using Docker executor with image android ...
    Pulling docker image gitlab/gitlab-runner:build ...
    Pulling docker image android:latest ...
    WARNING: Cannot pull the latest version of image android:latest : Error: image library/android:latest not found
    WARNING: Locally found image will be used instead.
Running on runner-76acd9d3-project-74192-concurrent-0 via ff9200d4be41...
Fetching changes...
Removing .gradle/
Removing artifacts.upload.log
Removing rxfirebaseandroid/build/
HEAD is now at 7f151df djgfj
Checking out 7f151df2 as ci-gitlab...
HEAD is now at 7f151df... djgfj
Restoring cache...
$ gradle testDebug
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:rxfirebaseandroid:preBuild UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:preDebugBuild UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:checkDebugManifest
:rxfirebaseandroid:prepareDebugDependencies
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugAidl UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugRenderscript UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugBuildConfig UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:mergeDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResValues UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugManifest UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugSources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugJavaRes UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugJavaWithJavac UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:preDebugUnitTestBuild UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:prepareDebugUnitTestDependencies
:rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugUnitTestJavaRes UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugUnitTestJavaWithJavac UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugUnitTestSources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:mockableAndroidJar UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:assembleDebugUnitTest UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:testDebugUnitTest UP-TO-DATE
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 51.086 secs
$ gradle assembleDebug
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileLint
:rxfirebaseandroid:copyDebugLint UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:preBuild UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:preDebugBuild UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:checkDebugManifest
:rxfirebaseandroid:prepareDebugDependencies
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugAidl UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugRenderscript UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugBuildConfig UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:mergeDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResValues UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugManifest UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugSources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugJavaRes UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugJavaWithJavac UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:extractDebugAnnotations UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:mergeDebugProguardFiles UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugJar UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugNdk UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugJniLibs UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugLocalJar UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugRenderscript UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:bundleDebug UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugSources UP-TO-DATE
:rxfirebaseandroid:assembleDebug UP-TO-DATE
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 10.146 secs
Archiving cache...
INFO[0000] Creating archive cache.tgz ...               
INFO[0002] Done!                                        
Archiving artifacts...
INFO[0000] Creating archive artifacts.tgz ...           
INFO[0000] Done!                                        
Uploading artifacts...
20.0K   artifacts.tgz
Build succeeded.
                I don't get the idea of this issue. You've already set up Gitlab CI for your Android testing and it works fine. Although, you want to during the test run Gradle and Android SDK installed on your Gitlab server, not download, just use existing, right? Could you add a log from failed build when you try to cache dependencies?
– piotrek1543
                Dec 8, 2015 at 17:42
                Is your question that:  you do not want to download the dependencies each time but want to use them from the local cache?
– RaGe
                Dec 8, 2015 at 21:30
                I'm confused that the question is met with so much confusion. To download the same 2GB over and over again for every commit is a bit insane, so how to cache it? I hacked in something like -v /srv/gitlab-runner/cache/:/cache/:rw and cp -ru stuff back and forth but I feel like missing something. Can't I tell my gitlab-ci-multi-runner to use a cache somehow?
– Giszmo
                Jan 16, 2016 at 4:26
https://stackoverflow.com/a/35478988/2026105
Turns out another post has the answer to this! There is a work around which is to run a before_script that sets the GRADLE_HOME to the directory of your project, which you can then slurp up with the cache directive.
before_script:
    - export GRADLE_USER_HOME=`pwd`/.gradle
cache:
  paths:
     - .gradle/wrapper
     - .gradle/caches
build:
  stage: build
  script:
     - ./gradlew assemble
test:
  stage: test
  script:
     - ./gradlew check
                Wouldn't be a better solution to do something like export GRADLE_USER_HOME=/cache/.gradle? As it automatically cached always.
– Hubbitus
                Sep 22, 2016 at 11:02
                @Hubbitus - possibly - if that works, maybe add that to the answer as an alternative / simpler way to do it.
– ETL
                Sep 22, 2016 at 14:56
                As far as I get it this does not work if you are using Shared Runners because each stage may run on a different one.
– madlymad
                Jan 9, 2017 at 12:04
                @madlymad - I think you're right. You would need to use artifacts for that so the files are zipped up and made available to the other stages.
– ETL
                Jan 9, 2017 at 16:31
  We run the caching outside the build container. So you can cache
  absolute paths, but since only /builds and /cache is transferred you
  have no-way to cache container-local files.
That means you need to put the gradle files into e.g. the /cache folder
before_script:
  - export GRADLE_USER_HOME=cache/.gradle
cache:
  key: "$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME" #optional: per branch caching, can be omitted
  paths:
    - $GRADLE_USER_HOME/caches/
    - $GRADLE_USER_HOME/wrapper/
    - $GRADLE_USER_HOME/build-cache/
The /cache folder will be kept automatically, but I keep the cache config for clarity.
                @jitter  and PerLundberg I'm not sure what exactly you guys mean. If you have suggestions for improvement I welcome an edit or a clear explanation on what you think is incorrect, why and how to fix it
– Patrick
                Nov 5, 2018 at 13:41
                I am curious, why did you need to add the cache definition in your .gitlab-ci.yaml since the /cache directory will be mounted regardless? Plus, the caching offered by GitLab works only for files in the build directory.
– Hamady C.
                Jan 6, 2019 at 4:31
We're running inside docker container on shared runner infrastructure using minio S3 backend to distribute the cache and landed on a solution somewhere along these lines:
variables:
  GRADLE_OPTS: "-Dorg.gradle.daemon=false -Dorg.gradle.vfs.watch=false -Dorg.gradle.caching=true"
  GRADLE_USER_HOME: .gradle/
default:
  image: yourfavoritegradlecontainer:latest
  cache: &gradle-cache
      files:
        - gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties
    paths:
      - .gradle/caches/
      - .gradle/notifications/
      - .gradle/wrapper/
    policy: pull
build:
  stage: build
  cache:
    <<: *gradle-cache
    policy: pull-push
  script:
    - ./gradlew assemble
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - app/build/outputs/apk
test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - ./gradlew test
The cache gets invalidated, when the gradle-wrapper.properties file is changed and to prevent cache thrashing, only build job is allowed to upload the cache. Of course, you could always add key: "$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME" to invalidate the cache more aggressively.
Seperately we export build artifacts, it supposedly helps, too.
GitLab is taking care of storing and restoring the cache, automatically from inside the container. This even works for a single shared runner.
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