Overview

Caching is a great way to optimize performance of job operations by reusing saved data from previous jobs. Setting up a cache within a self-hosted runner is the same process as if you were using CircleCI infrastructure.

Utilization

To utilize the caching feature on a runner, the data that needs to be cached should be placed in a common directory such as /tmp/.

When restoring the cache, the data will be restored in the same common folder.

job1:
    machine: true
    resource_class: your-namespace/your-resource
    steps:
      - run: echo "sent to job 2" >> /tmp/cache.txt
      - save_cache:
          paths:
            - /tmp/cache.txt
          key: runner-cache-v1            

  job2:
    machine: true
    resource_class: your-namespace/your-resource
    steps:
      - restore_cache:
          keys:
            - runner-cache-v1
      - run: cat /tmp/cache.txt

Additional Resources:

• Caching Dependencies
• Caching Strategies
• CircleCI Self-hosted Runner FAQs