I would like to cache npm dependencies in a file in my Continuous Integration so that subsequent npm ci invocations are fast. Also, when dependencies slightly change, I would like npm ci to be pretty fast by reusing the cached dependencies from the previous build, and then store the cache with only the most recently used dependencies (without old unused dependencies). Is there a way to prune the npm cache to only the files that were used in the most recent npm ci?
I see that GitHub’s actions/setup-node stores the ~/.npm HTTP cache in GitHub’s cache, but since the primaryKey of the cache.restoreCache call is based on the hash of package-lock.json, the entirety of ~/.npm is regenerated if package-lock.json is even slightly changed (cache-restore.ts). In contrast, I would like to use the previous ~/.npm as the starting point even if it has slightly different dependencies.
I also saw a blog post, “Super fast npm install on Github Actions” by Selwyn which uses a liberal restore-keys parameter to actions/cache to reuse the previous ~/.npm directory even when package-lock.json changes. However, it appears that this solution fetches the old ~/.npm cache but does not prune the ~/.npm cache to only the recently used entries, so it will accumulate new versions of a dependency and not delete old versions. I would like a solution that prunes the cache to the entries that are needed by the current build.
Feel free to give an answer for pnpm or yarn too if there is an answer.
