Speeding up build times by caching assets

[mjgs]

I’d like to speed up build times by caching assets between builds. I noticed there was a Gatsby Netlify plug-in that does something like this, I think it moves a .cache folder between adjacent builds.

I download a bunch of frontend libraries on npm install and I’m looking for a way to cache these between builds because it takes a long time compared to building the site.

Is there a way to do this for non Gatsby sites? Could just use the Gatsby plugin or would I need to do it some other way?

[perry]

Hey mjgs! welcome to netlify. Yes, there is a gatsby plugin you can try - (if you need support with that, please post in #Netlify-support:build-plugins)

But first, here is a stack of information about caching - you shouldn’t have to do a fresh install every time, really. We defininitely cache dependencies between subsequent builds (unless something is configured differently than it should be)
maybe these are helpful:

[Support Guide] How does Netlify’s CDN handle caching files?

While the topic of caching effectively is complex, Netlify’s solution is designed to be automatic and worry-free. It shouldn’t require any special configuration or build tools like cachebusting or service workers to deliver an optimal experience. So what can go wrong? Some cachebusting techniques can make your site build and load more slowly. Scarier still, modifying Netlify’s default caching settings can break the atomic rollbacks and deploys which are some of the coolest things abou…

[Support Guide] Making the most of Netlify's CDN cache

Our CDN derives much of its efficiency from files whose checksums don’t change between deploys. For instance, in a blog, you usually write or update one article in one file, while the rest of the content remains unchanged. In this typical use case, we don’t need to re-upload and re-process these files, since our CDN already has them stored - no checksums have changed except the one file. This also means that your visitors’ browsers don’t need to re-download any files, since they already have …

[Support Guide] Making sure your builds use appropriate resources for Netlify's build system

Hopefully, your builds “just work”, once you have things configured. That’s the intention, but the reality can fall a bit short, so this article talks in detail about some of the limitations that customers run into while building. The operation of Netlify’s build system is pretty well documented in several places such as: a somewhat conversational “how it works” guide. our official documentation and you can even see the source code, and run yourself, locally, following these instructions. T…

[Support Guide] How can I optimize my Netlify build time?

If you are interested in learning more about how our bots approach building sites, these three articles are a great place to start: How our Build Bots build sites The last major upgrade to our build environment and perhaps least-loved but most useful, how to debug your builds So you might think, it’s great that Netlify builds every commit from my repos…but isn’t that a bit wasteful? The answer is, it depends, but we can at least give you some best practices for limiting waste. Maybe …

[Support Guide] How long should Netlify builds take?

The only universal answer to this is: it varies. More detail would probably be helpful, right? Below we explain which factors affect the lengths of builds on Netlify One key factor is the site itself. Larger sites will take longer to build than smaller ones, and things like images and video can impact this (if those assets need to be downloaded or processed during build). Another factor is the static site generator (SSG) being used (if any). The performance of SSGs varies widely…