This weekend I was trying to optimize a GitHub Actions workflow composed of three primary steps: build, preview, and test. I really wanted the build step to be followed by the in preview and test steps in parallel. My first thought was to use the actions/cache action to persist the workspace between jobs, but there was a little more boilerplate than I wanted because I didn’t need to cache between different workflow runs, only jobs for a particular commit.
So I created a new action with two child actions jpoehnelt/reusable-workspace/save and jpoehnelt/reusable-workspace/restore to simplify the process.
The usage looks like the following.
name: CI on: pull_request: jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 # Build steps (save should be after this) - uses: jpoehnelt/reusable-workspace/save@v1 preview: needs: [build] runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: jpoehnelt/reusable-workspace/restore@v1 # Additional steps (restore should be before this) test: needs: [build] runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: jpoehnelt/reusable-workspace/restore@v1 with: fail-on-miss: true # Additional steps (restore should be before this) My workflow now runs the build and then the preview and test steps in parallel. The preview job can also use a matrix without needing to rebuild the workspace after this change.
This new action is a great way to optimize your GitHub Actions workflows and reduce the time it takes to run your CI/CD pipeline. I hope you find it useful, just include the following:
- uses: jpoehnelt/reusable-workspace/restore@v1 - uses: jpoehnelt/reusable-workspace/save@v1 
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