🚀 GitHub Actions Cache Server

This repository contains the code for a self-hosted GitHub Actions cache server implementation. It allows for caching dependencies and other reusable data between GitHub Actions runs, aiming to speed up your CI/CD workflows. The cache server supports multiple storage solutions, with MinIO as a primary example.

Features

• 🔥 Compatible with official actions/cache action
• 📦 Supports multiple storage solutions and is easily extendable.
• 🔒 Secure and self-hosted, giving you full control over your cache data.

🐳 Deployment Using Docker

version: '3.9'

services:
  cache-server:
    image: ghcr.io/falcondev-it/github-actions-cache-server:latest
    ports:
      - '3000:3000'
    environment:
      CACHE_SERVER_TOKEN: random_token
      BASE_URL: http://localhost:3000
      SECRET: long_random_secret
      MINIO_BUCKET: gh-actions-cache
      MINIO_ACCESS_KEY: access_key
      MINIO_SECRET_KEY: secret_key
      MINIO_ENDPOINT: minio
      MINIO_PORT: '9000'
      MINIO_USE_SSL: 'false'
      NITRO_PORT: '3000'
    volumes:
      - cache-data:/app/data

  minio:
    image: quay.io/minio/minio
    ports:
      - '9000:9000'
    environment:
      MINIO_ROOT_USER: access_key
      MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD: secret_key

volumes:
  cache-data:

To run this server, you'll need to set up the following environment variables:

• CACHE_SERVER_TOKEN: A token for authenticating runtime requests. Example: random_token
• BASE_URL: The base URL of your cache server. Example: http://localhost:3000
• SECRET: A secret key for the server. Example: long_random_secret
• MINIO_BUCKET: The name of the MinIO bucket used for storage. Example: gh-actions-cache
• MINIO_ACCESS_KEY: The access key for MinIO. Example: access_key
• MINIO_SECRET_KEY: The secret key for MinIO. Example: secret_key
• MINIO_ENDPOINT: The endpoint URL for MinIO. Example: minio
• MINIO_PORT: The port MinIO is running on. Example: 9000
• MINIO_USE_SSL: Whether to use SSL for MinIO connections. Example: false
• NITRO_PORT: The port the server should listen on. Example: 3000

🔥 Using with Self-Hosted Runners

To leverage the GitHub Actions Cache Server with your self-hosted runners, you'll need to configure a couple of environment variables on your runners. This ensures that your runners can authenticate with and utilize the cache server effectively.

Configuring Environment Variables on Self-Hosted Runners

1. ACTIONS_CACHE_URL: This tells your self-hosted runner where to send cache requests. Set this environment variable to the BASE_URL of your cache server with the CACHE_SERVER_TOKEN as first path parameter, making sure to include a trailing slash. For example, if your cache server's BASE_URL is http://localhost:3000 and your CACHE_SERVER_TOKEN is my_token, you would set ACTIONS_CACHE_URL to http://localhost:3000/my_token/.

Getting the Actions Runner to Use the Cache Server

The default self-hosted runner overwrites the ACTIONS_CACHE_URL environment variable with the GitHub-hosted cache server URL. To get the runner to use your self-hosted cache server, you'll need to modify the runner binary in your runner Docker image:

Just add the following lines to your Dockerfile:

# modify actions runner binaries to allow custom cache server implementation
RUN sed -i 's/\x41\x00\x43\x00\x54\x00\x49\x00\x4F\x00\x4E\x00\x53\x00\x5F\x00\x43\x00\x41\x00\x43\x00\x48\x00\x45\x00\x5F\x00\x55\x00\x52\x00\x4C\x00/\x41\x00\x43\x00\x54\x00\x49\x00\x4F\x00\x4E\x00\x53\x00\x5F\x00\x43\x00\x41\x00\x43\x00\x48\x00\x45\x00\x5F\x00\x4F\x00\x52\x00\x4C\x00/g' /home/runner/bin/Runner.Worker.dll

This will replace the strings ACTIONS_CACHE_URL with ACTIONS_CACHE_ORL in the runner binary. This will prevent the runner from overwriting the ACTIONS_CACHE_URL environment variable and allow it to use your self-hosted cache server.

Doing it this way is a bit of a hack, but it's easier than compiling your own runner binary from source and works great.