How to enable maven artifact caching for gitlab ci runner?

Question

We use gitlab ci with shared runners to do our continuous integration. For each build, the runner downloads tons of maven artifacts.

Is there a way to configure gitl

Answer 1

If you are using kubernetes as executor for gitlab-runner, you can also use the maven cache. I chose to have a persistent cache on NFS with k8s PV (but other volume type are supported by gitlab-runner). The following configuration doesn't use the cache gitlab feature because of persistence offered by NFS.

1) create a PersistentVolume on your cluster, ex here with NFS (adapt to your persistence layer and your options) :

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: gitlabrunner-nfs-volume
spec:
  capacity:
    storage: 10Gi
  mountOptions:
    - nolock
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteMany
  persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Recycle
  nfs:
    path: /gitlabrunner
    server: 1.2.3.4

2) Reference the PV to get a claim as a volume in the runner pod :

[[runners.kubernetes.volumes.pvc]]
  name = "pvc-1"
  mount_path = "/path/to/mount/point1"

Note (03/09/18) : A command line option for these paramaters doesn't exist yet. There is a open issue.

3) Specify the same path for the gitlab-runner cache :

[[runners]]
  executor = "kubernetes"
  # ...
  cache_dir = "/path/to/mount/point1"

or

--cache-dir "/path/to/mount/point1" in interactive mode

4) use the "/path/to/mount/point1" directory in the -Dmaven.repo.local option