Google Cloud Builds, How to speed up build time of application(npm packages)

Question

My web application runs in Google Cloud Platform, lately I realized that application's build time takes really long, especially when you are testing a feature, let say refresh the page, you can see that it takes really long to start application. What I am looking for is how to speed up this process. I am using docker images to build on google cloud registry. I do not want to re-build all npm packages every time, when there is an update in some npm packages then I want to re-build application.

here is the my cloudbuild.yaml file for polymer

steps:
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/docker'
  args: [ 'build', '-t', 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/myapp-polymer', '.' ]
images:
- 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/myapp-polymer'

then here is the my main cloudbuild.yaml file

steps:
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm'
  args: ['--prefix', 'myapp','install']
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm'
  args: ['--prefix', 'myapp/functions', 'install']
- name: 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/myapp-polymer'
  args: ['cd', 'myapp']
- name: 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/myapp-polymer'
  args: ['build']

I read Google Cloud API especially section "Speeding up your Builds" (https://cloud.google.com/cloud-build/docs/speeding-up-builds)

I think it just cache build images and using it. Are there any way that I can cache specifically npm packages, dependencies etc in Google Cloud so that I do not have to build every time whole application? My main goal is to reduce build time, speed up build process.

Thanks!

user_9453779 · Answer

Have you tried Kaniko? It can save the cache in gcr.io and and if you have built your Dockerfile with right steps (see https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/7-best-practices-for-building-containers), it should save you a lot of time. Here is the cloudbuild.yaml example:

- name: 'gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest'
  args:
  - --destination=gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/image
  - --cache=true
  - --cache-ttl=XXh

More info: https://cloud.google.com/cloud-build/docs/kaniko-cache

user_5497962 · Answer

You could use docker.

Put your npm application into docker. Then you can push your docker image (upload some layers of your docker image) to a cloud registry, e.g. gcr (Google Cloud Registry). Before your build step, you could pull your image from gcr.

This is what the build step would approximately look like:

- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/docker'
  args: [
          'build',
          '-t', 'test_image',
          '-f', 'Dockerfile',
          '.'
        ]
  id: 'build_test_image'

Google Cloud Builds, How to speed up build time of application(npm packages)

2 Answers