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Rust Cache Action

A GitHub Action that implements smart caching for rust/cargo projects with sensible defaults.

Example usage

- uses: actions/checkout@v4

# selecting a toolchain either by action or manual `rustup` calls should happen
# before the plugin, as the cache uses the current rustc version as its cache key
- run: rustup toolchain install stable --profile minimal

- uses: Swatinem/rust-cache@v2
  with:
    # The prefix cache key, this can be changed to start a new cache manually.
    # default: "v0-rust"
    prefix-key: ""

    # A cache key that is used instead of the automatic `job`-based key,
    # and is stable over multiple jobs.
    # default: empty
    shared-key: ""

    # An additional cache key that is added alongside the automatic `job`-based
    # cache key and can be used to further differentiate jobs.
    # default: empty
    key: ""

    # A whitespace separated list of env-var *prefixes* who's value contributes
    # to the environment cache key.
    # The env-vars are matched by *prefix*, so the default `RUST` var will
    # match all of `RUSTC`, `RUSTUP_*`, `RUSTFLAGS`, `RUSTDOC_*`, etc.
    # default: "CARGO CC CFLAGS CXX CMAKE RUST"
    env-vars: ""

    # The cargo workspaces and target directory configuration.
    # These entries are separated by newlines and have the form
    # `$workspace -> $target`. The `$target` part is treated as a directory
    # relative to the `$workspace` and defaults to "target" if not explicitly given.
    # default: ". -> target"
    workspaces: ""

    # Additional non workspace directories to be cached, separated by newlines.
    cache-directories: ""

    # Determines whether workspace `target` directories are cached.
    # If `false`, only the cargo registry will be cached.
    # default: "true"
    cache-targets: ""

    # Determines if the cache should be saved even when the workflow has failed.
    # default: "false"
    cache-on-failure: ""

    # Determines which crates are cached.
    # If `true` all crates will be cached, otherwise only dependent crates will be cached.
    # Useful if additional crates are used for CI tooling.
    # default: "false"
    cache-all-crates: ""

    # Determines whether the cache should be saved.
    # If `false`, the cache is only restored.
    # Useful for jobs where the matrix is additive e.g. additional Cargo features,
    # or when only runs from `master` should be saved to the cache.
    # default: "true"
    save-if: ""
    # To only cache runs from `master`:
    save-if: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/master' }}

    # Determines whether the cache should be restored.
    # If `true` the cache key will be checked and the `cache-hit` output will be set
    # but the cache itself won't be restored
    # default: "false"
    lookup-only: ""

    # Specifies what to use as the backend providing cache
    # Can be set to either "github" or "buildjet"
    # default: "github"
    cache-provider: ""

Further examples are available in the .github/workflows directory.

Outputs

cache-hit

This is a boolean flag that will be set to true when there was an exact cache hit.

Cache Effectiveness

This action only caches the dependencies of a crate, so is more effective if the dependency / own code ratio is higher.

It is also most effective for repositories with a Cargo.lock file. Library repositories with only a Cargo.toml file have limited benefits, as cargo will always use the most up-to-date dependency versions, which may not be cached.

Usage with Stable Rust is most effective, as a cache is tied to the Rust version. Using it with Nightly Rust is less effective as it will throw away the cache every day, unless a specific nightly build is being pinned.

Cache Details

This action currently caches the following files/directories:

  • ~/.cargo (installed binaries, the cargo registry, cache, and git dependencies)
  • ./target (build artifacts of dependencies)

This cache is automatically keyed by:

  • the github job_id,
  • the rustc release / host / hash,
  • the value of some compiler-specific environment variables (eg. RUSTFLAGS, etc), and
  • a hash of all Cargo.lock / Cargo.toml files found anywhere in the repository (if present).
  • a hash of all rust-toolchain / rust-toolchain.toml files in the root of the repository (if present).
  • a hash of all .cargo/config.toml files in the root of the repository (if present).

An additional input key can be provided if the builtin keys are not sufficient.

Before being persisted, the cache is cleaned of:

  • Any files in ~/.cargo/bin that were present before the action ran (for example rustc).
  • Dependencies that are no longer used.
  • Anything that is not a dependency.
  • Incremental build artifacts.
  • Any build artifacts with an mtime older than one week.

In particular, the workspace crates themselves are not cached since doing so is generally not effective. For this reason, this action automatically sets CARGO_INCREMENTAL=0 to disable incremental compilation, so that the Rust compiler doesn't waste time creating the additional artifacts required for incremental builds.

The ~/.cargo/registry/src directory is not cached since it is quicker for Cargo to recreate it from the compressed crate archives in ~/.cargo/registry/cache.

The action will try to restore from a previous Cargo.lock version as well, so lockfile updates should only re-build changed dependencies.

The action invokes cargo metadata to determine the current set of dependencies.

Additionally, the action automatically works around cargo#8603 / actions/cache#403 which would otherwise corrupt the cache on macOS builds.

Cache Limits and Control

This specialized cache action is built on top of the upstream cache action maintained by GitHub. The same restrictions and limits apply, which are documented here: Caching dependencies to speed up workflows

In particular, caches are currently limited to 10 GB in total and exceeding that limit will cause eviction of older caches.

Caches from base branches are available to PRs, but not across unrelated branches.

The caches can be controlled using the Cache API which allows listing existing caches and manually removing entries.

Debugging

The action prints detailed information about which information it considers for its cache key, and it outputs more debug-only information about which cleanup steps it performs before persisting the cache.

You can read up on how to enable debug logging to see those details as well as further details related to caching operations.

Known issues

  • The cache cleaning process currently removes all the files from ~/.cargo/bin that were present before the action ran (for example rustc).