Introduction: Hidden Costs in CI/CD Pipelines
Every day, we deploy dozens, sometimes hundreds, of times. The faster and smoother this process, the more efficiently teams work. At the heart of CI/CD pipelines are build operations. However, these builds, especially in large projects, can consume significant time and resources. A build taking hours prolongs developer waiting times, breaks the fast feedback loop, and most importantly, increases infrastructure costs. Not only build times, but also the CPU, RAM, and disk I/O used during builds must be considered.
In this article, we will focus on a cost item frequently encountered and often overlooked in CI/CD pipelines: build cache management. From my observations in my own projects and during consulting, incorrect management of build caches can lead to significant and unnecessary waste of time and money. Time is the most valuable asset for development and operations teams. One way to use this time more efficiently is through intelligent build cache management.
What is Build Cache and Why is it Important?
A build cache is a mechanism that stores repetitive work performed during the compilation or packaging of a software project. For example, in a Java project, dependencies are not downloaded or compiled repeatedly in every build; they are cached. Similarly, in a frontend project, the node_modules folder or compiled JavaScript/CSS files can be cached. The basic principle is: if a file or operation has been performed before and its input hasn't changed, use the cached output instead of recalculating it.
