Increase GitHub Actions Cache rate limits for granular build caches

[yz89122]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Actions Cache

Discussion Details

I would like GitHub Actions Cache to support higher rate limits for granular build-cache workloads.

Use case:

I want fast go build and fast golangci-lint runs in GitHub Actions.

Go has an official external build cache protocol, GOCACHEPROG: https://pkg.go.dev/cmd/go/internal/cacheprog

golangci-lint also supports cache integration through GOLANGCI_LINT_CACHEPROG: https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/blob/8baaf6d0eacf5b1a7c10c200f6766662cff3964c/internal/go/cache/default_gcil.go#L5

For workloads like go build, granular caching is the right cache shape. Caching one large directory by lock file is a poor fit:

• If we keep accumulating the cache, it grows without bound, and it is hard to prune objects that are no longer used inside that directory cache.
• If we key the cache by lock file, source changes can invalidate many useful build artifacts even when dependencies have not changed. This is especially harmful for linters and common utility packages: a small shared source change can force large rebuilds or reanalysis, even though most cached objects for imported packages are still reusable.
• Each cache version duplicates many of the same build-cache objects, wasting storage.

In practice, even a small Go program can easily require 3k+ cache entries, and a normal Go main can require 10k+ entries. That is far beyond the current GitHub Actions dependency cache API rate limits: 200 cache uploads/minute and 1500 cache downloads/minute per repository: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/limits

When trying to back GOCACHEPROG with GitHub Actions Cache directly, workflows quickly hit 429s. Failed remote restores become local cache misses, Go rebuilds the entries, and then many remote saves fail too. A second go build inside the same job may be fast because of a job-local cache, but a rerun of the same commit is still slow because the remote cache cannot serve this granular workload reliably.

Request:

Please consider increasing the GitHub Actions Cache rate limits so granular build caches can be practical. The current dependency-cache rate limits make this use case infeasible even though the storage model is otherwise very useful.

A related improvement would be officially maintained granular cache actions for common build-cache protocols, such as Go GOCACHEPROG, with GitHub-native auth, permissions, branch scoping, retention, cache visibility, and billing.

External storage like S3 or GCS can be used, but it would be better if this worked directly with GitHub Actions Cache.

[github-actions[bot]]

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