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Slow post-action after v4 #878

@TrygveUrdahl

Description

@TrygveUrdahl

Description:
The post-action step for this action seems to have become much slower after version 4.0.0 was released.
In the two included images, the only major difference should be the version of actions/setup-node.

Before:
image

After:
image

Action version:
Using actions/setup-node@v4 15 hours after 4.0.0 was released.

Platform:

  • Ubuntu
    macOS
    Windows

Runner type:

  • Hosted
    Self-hosted

Tools version:
Node 18.18.2, and Yarn@4.0.0.

Activity

TrygveUrdahl

TrygveUrdahl commented on Oct 24, 2023

@TrygveUrdahl
Author

I noticed that my workflow files didn't specify what node version to use for this workflow through any node-version or node-version-file. By adding that, and upgrading my project to use node 20, this issue seems to go away.

nikolai-laevskii

nikolai-laevskii commented on Oct 24, 2023

@nikolai-laevskii
Contributor

Thank you for detailed description of the issue! We'll investigate it and come back with details.

panva

panva commented on Oct 25, 2023

@panva
Contributor

I noticed that my workflow files didn't specify what node version to use for this workflow through any node-version or node-version-file. By adding that, and upgrading my project to use node 20, this issue seems to go away.

My workflows do always specify node-version but the post-action is slow as well.

I also have a flow log here which despite requesting lts/iron resolved 20.8.1 which isn't lts/iron. This particular setup-node use is from a reused worflow, when setup-node is used outside of a reused workflow the correct 20.9.0 is resolved.

bodinsamuel

bodinsamuel commented on Oct 27, 2023

@bodinsamuel
ledermann

ledermann commented on Oct 31, 2023

@ledermann

Same here in multiple projects using JS with Yarn. The Post Setup Node.js job slows down from a few seconds to about 2:20 minutes after upgrading to v4.

It seems to me that this only happens when JS dependencies have been updated. Re-running the job (which causes a cache hit) is fast again - perhaps because the cache doesn't need to be saved.

My conclusion: Saving the cache is significantly slower with v4 than with v3.

ari-becker

ari-becker commented on Nov 4, 2023

@ari-becker

Noticing this as well because I have an aggressive timeout-minutes: 1 on my actions/setup-node step, which is now causing many of my builds to fail.

I concur with @ledermann that the issue is somewhere in cache-saving.

With a cache hit, the post-action takes 0s as expected:

image

Without a cache hit, when trying to save the cache, the post-action times out:

image

eregon

eregon commented on Nov 7, 2023

@eregon

See ruby/setup-ruby#543 which explains a possible cause and fix.

33 remaining items

domhhv

domhhv commented on Nov 3, 2024

@domhhv

Hi all. I think I am still affected by this issue.

In my app, the "Post Cache node_modules" step takes quite long for some reason (2m on average). As a result, if I install or remove a yarn dependency, the setup job alone takes around 3 minutes before any other job can start, while if I don't change any deps, it takes only 10 seconds, which is great and expected.

But I would still like not to slow the process down when deps change. Is the behavior I described expected and is there anything I can do? I already changed actions/setup-node@v4 to actions/setup-node@main in my GH workflow.

Here's a link to one of the slow setup runs: https://github.com/domhhv/habitrack/actions/runs/11651863472/job/32442340624.

aparnajyothi-y

aparnajyothi-y commented on Dec 16, 2024

@aparnajyothi-y
Contributor

Hello @domhhv, Thanks for sharing the details. The slow ""Post Cache node_modules"" step when dependencies change is somewhat expected, as it involves cache validation or recreation. This behavior is aligned with the caching mechanism used by actions/setup-node, which caches the global package cache (e.g., ~/.npm for npm, ~/.pnpm-store for pnpm), but does not directly cache the node_modules directory to prevent inconsistencies across different environments.

Here are a few suggestions to optimize the process:

Cache Key: Ensure your cache key includes both package.json and yarn.lock to invalidate the cache only when dependencies change. This minimizes unnecessary cache misses and speeds up subsequent jobs:

key: ${{ runner.os }}-yarn-${{ hashFiles('/package.json', '/yarn.lock') }}

Use yarn install --frozen-lockfile: This ensures that Yarn installs dependencies exactly as specified in yarn.lock, which can help prevent unnecessary updates and speed up the process:

  • run: yarn install --frozen-lockfile

Cache Yarn Cache: In addition to node_modules,

consider caching the Yarn cache directory (~/.cache/yarn) to reduce the time spent downloading dependencies from scratch:

  • name: Cache Yarn dependencies
    uses: actions/cache@v4
    with:
    path: ~/.cache/yarn
    key: ${{ runner.os }}-yarn-${{ hashFiles('**/yarn.lock') }}
    These optimizations should help reduce the setup time when dependencies change.
    Please let me know if you need any further assistance!
compojoom

compojoom commented on Dec 17, 2024

@compojoom

Hey guys! I wanted to share my experience here. Maybe it could help someone.
I was pulling my hair today and wondered why actions/cache is sooooo slow! Then I found this doc:
https://github.com/actions/cache/blob/main/caching-strategies.md
Which made me think that it could be the calculation of my cache key that is so slow.
You see nextjs is suggesting you do the following:
https://nextjs.org/docs/pages/building-your-application/deploying/ci-build-caching

uses: actions/cache@v4
with:
  # See here for caching with `yarn` https://github.com/actions/cache/blob/main/examples.md#node---yarn or you can leverage caching with actions/setup-node https://github.com/actions/setup-node
  path: |
    ~/.npm
    ${{ github.workspace }}/.next/cache
  # Generate a new cache whenever packages or source files change.
  key: ${{ runner.os }}-nextjs-${{ hashFiles('**/package-lock.json') }}-${{ hashFiles('**/*.js', '**/*.jsx', '**/*.ts', '**/*.tsx') }}
  # If source files changed but packages didn't, rebuild from a prior cache.
  restore-keys: |
    ${{ runner.os }}-nextjs-${{ hashFiles('**/package-lock.json') }}-

As you can notice the hashFiles function is looking for js, jsx, ts and tsx files. In my project we are talking about 1000s of files. So I split the job in restore and save parts and when saving I reuse the key from the restore job.

This actually seems to have fixed the post action for me.

simon-abbott

simon-abbott commented on Dec 17, 2024

@simon-abbott

@compojoom Good thought, but unfortunately that's not the case here. The cache key is calculated during the cache restore step (using only the lockfile) and is re-used without recalculation during the post-job action.

I think this step really is just slow because the cache directory is huge, and thus takes a while to sync across to the cache.

compojoom

compojoom commented on Dec 17, 2024

@compojoom

@simon-abbott oh sorry. I posted in the wrong repo. setup-node is fast in my jobs. I was having issues with the "actions/cache" job

domhhv

domhhv commented on Dec 20, 2024

@domhhv

@aparnajyothi-y Hello, and thank you for getting back to me! Everything you described makes perfect sense to me.

I can see that I'm only caching yarn.lock in my workflow at this moment, so I'll definitely give it a try to also cache package.json and Yarn cache directory.

Thanks!

reedws

reedws commented on Jan 15, 2025

@reedws

Is there a reason this fix has not been tagged and released yet?

oerp-odoo

oerp-odoo commented on Feb 13, 2025

@oerp-odoo

I also get very slow post actions. It might be related with caching.

Image

My workflow:

---
name: pre-commit

on:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  pre-commit:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          # requites to grab the history of the PR
          fetch-depth: 0
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v4.4.0
        with:
          python-version: "3.10"
          cache: "pip"
      - run: python -m pip install pre-commit
      - uses: actions/cache@v3
        with:
          path: ~/.cache/pre-commit/
          key:
            pre-commit-4|${{ env.pythonLocation }}|${{
            hashFiles('.pre-commit-config.yaml') }}
      - run:
          pre-commit run --show-diff-on-failure --color=always --from-ref ${{
          github.event.pull_request.base.sha }} --to-ref ${{ github.sha }}
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      Slow post-action after v4 · Issue #878 · actions/setup-node