[FEATURE] Cache build artifacts for npm ci

[skeggse]

What / Why

Some modules bind to C++ code, and need to build their binary for the current system on install. Re-running npm install helpfully doesn't force a rebuild of these binaries, but npm ci will rebuild those binaries. This is likely due to blowing away the node_modules directory.

For example, with node-rdkafka, running npm ci in one of our services takes a full 1m15s at best (on macs, it's quite a bit slower). The vast majority of that time is spend configuring, building and linking its native dependencies. I'd like to see a system- or user-level cache (maybe opt-in) that caches named files, all .so objects, all new files created during the install hook, or files identified by some other mechanism.

When

• I use npm ci to re-install the module tree to match the new tree.

Where

• n/a

How

Current Behavior

• npm ci removes everything in node_modules and deletes build artifacts.

Expected Behavior

• npm ci caches build artifacts by some identification strategy and copies them instead of running the build script (or maybe just copies them to let the build script detect their presence)

Who

• n/a

References

• Related to [FEATURE] Do not remove node_modules on npm ci #564

[darcyclarke]

npm v6 is no longer in active development; We will continue to push security releases to v6 at our team's discretion as-per our Support Policy.

If your bug is preproducible on v7, please re-file this issue using our new issue template.

If your issue was a feature request, please consider opening a new RRFC or RFC. If your issue was a question or other idea that was not CLI-specific, consider opening a discussion on our feedback repo

Closing: This is an automated message.