Can Bamboo cache npm node_modules to speed up builds?

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to speed up Bamboo builds that involve npm. From the logs, I can see that `npm install` takes roughly 8 minutes...

simple	08-Nov-2018 08:00:30	Starting task 'Install' of type 'com.atlassian.bamboo.plugins.bamboo-nodejs-plugin:task.builder.npm'
command 08-Nov-2018 08:00:30 Beginning to execute external process for build '...'
 ... running command line: 
/usr/bin/node /usr/bin/npm install
 ...
...
...
...
simple 08-Nov-2018 08:07:50 Finished task 'Install' with result: Success

Is Bamboo caching the `node_modules` directory after `npm install`? Is it possible to have Bamboo cache `node_modules` across multiple builds?

This is what job configuration looks like:

Chris Berry · Answer

Hi Hristo,

If you specify a Node install task it will always  reinstall the files.

If you do not clean the build directory before and after the job then you could use a ScriptTask instead. The below would only run the install if the node_module directory doesn't already exist.

[ ! -d "node_modules" ] && npm install

You would need to have an additional ScriptTask to perform any necessary cleaning.

thanks

Chris

Atlassian support- Bamboo