Gitlab CI : Skipping cache archiving due to empty cache key

Question

I can't caching node_modules for .NET core and angular project in gitlab ci script.

I have this message Skipping cache archiving due to empty cache key

here is my CI JOB

build_job:
  stage: build
  except:
    refs:
      - tags
  tags:
    - windows
  script:
    - dotnet restore .\$CI_PROJECT_NAME.sln
    - dotnet build /p:Version=${env:VERSION} -c Release --no-restore /nr:false
  artifacts:
    name: "build-$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME"
    paths:
      - '$CI_PROJECT_NAME/'
      - '$CI_PROJECT_NAME.Tests/'
  cache:
    key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}-node
    paths:
      - './$CI_PROJECT_NAME/ClientApp/node_modules/'

Answer 1

I was having the same problem for my Windows runner with a C++ build. No matter what I set in my .config-ci.yml file I could not get my third party library builds cached.

In turns out the problem was that I did not have a cache_dir in the config.toml for my Gitlab runner settings. Once I set this, the simple cache settings in my .config-ci.yml file worked as desired.

Unfortunately the error is misleading as to which key in which configuration file is missing.