Gitlab CI gradle dependency cache

Question

I'm building android on Gitlab CI and downloading dependencies each time is annoying. I tried caching:

$HOME/.gradle/ $HOME/.gradle/caches/ $GRADLE_HOME/caches/ $HOME/.m2/ .gradle/ build/ app/build/ 

The 26594th iteration of my .gitlab-ci.yml is here. I've installed gradle in my build environment because without caching gradlew downloads it every time, which takes even more time. The image I use for building is here. My CI server startup script can be found here. I assume that, if caching works, I won't see a list of my dependencies downloading on every build.

Build log:

gitlab-ci-multi-runner 0.7.2 (998cf5d) Using Docker executor with image android ... Pulling docker image gitlab/gitlab-runner:build ... Pulling docker image android:latest ... WARNING: Cannot pull the latest version of image android:latest : Error: image library/android:latest not found WARNING: Locally found image will be used instead.

Running on runner-76acd9d3-project-74192-concurrent-0 via ff9200d4be41... Fetching changes... Removing .gradle/ Removing artifacts.upload.log Removing rxfirebaseandroid/build/ HEAD is now at 7f151df djgfj Checking out 7f151df2 as ci-gitlab... HEAD is now at 7f151df... djgfj Restoring cache...  $ gradle testDebug Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/gradle/1.3.0/gradle-1.3.0.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/gradle-core/1.3.0/gradle-core-1.3.0.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/builder/1.3.0/builder-1.3.0.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/lint/lint/24.3.0/lint-24.3.0.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/net/sf/proguard/proguard-gradle/5.2.1/proguard-gradle-5.2.1.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/net/sf/proguard/proguard-parent/5.2.1/proguard-parent-5.2.1.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/builder-model/1.3.0/builder-model-1.3.0.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/builder-test-api/1.3.0/builder-test-api-1.3.0.pom Download https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/sdklib/24.3.0/sdklib-24.3.0.pom Download 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https://jcenter.bintray.com/junit/junit/4.12/junit-4.12.jar :rxfirebaseandroid:preBuild UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:preDebugBuild UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:checkDebugManifest :rxfirebaseandroid:prepareDebugDependencies :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugAidl UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugRenderscript UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugBuildConfig UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:mergeDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResValues UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugManifest UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugSources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugJavaRes UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugJavaWithJavac UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:preDebugUnitTestBuild UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:prepareDebugUnitTestDependencies :rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugUnitTestJavaRes UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugUnitTestJavaWithJavac UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugUnitTestSources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:mockableAndroidJar UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:assembleDebugUnitTest UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:testDebugUnitTest UP-TO-DATE  BUILD SUCCESSFUL  Total time: 51.086 secs $ gradle assembleDebug :rxfirebaseandroid:compileLint :rxfirebaseandroid:copyDebugLint UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:preBuild UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:preDebugBuild UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:checkDebugManifest :rxfirebaseandroid:prepareDebugDependencies :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugAidl UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugRenderscript UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugBuildConfig UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:mergeDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResValues UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugManifest UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:generateDebugSources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:processDebugJavaRes UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugJavaWithJavac UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:extractDebugAnnotations UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:mergeDebugProguardFiles UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugJar UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugNdk UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugJniLibs UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugLocalJar UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:packageDebugRenderscript UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:bundleDebug UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:compileDebugSources UP-TO-DATE :rxfirebaseandroid:assembleDebug UP-TO-DATE  BUILD SUCCESSFUL  Total time: 10.146 secs  Archiving cache... INFO[0000] Creating archive cache.tgz ...                INFO[0002] Done!                                         Archiving artifacts... INFO[0000] Creating archive artifacts.tgz ...            INFO[0000] Done!                                         Uploading artifacts... 20.0K   artifacts.tgz  Build succeeded. 

Answer 1

https://stackoverflow.com/a/35478988/2026105

Turns out another post has the answer to this! There is a work around which is to run a before_script that sets the GRADLE_HOME to the directory of your project, which you can then slurp up with the cache directive.

before_script:     - export GRADLE_USER_HOME=`pwd`/.gradle  cache:   paths:      - .gradle/wrapper      - .gradle/caches  build:   stage: build   script:      - ./gradlew assemble  test:   stage: test   script:      - ./gradlew check