Is there a way to prevent the dependency tarballs in the `.konan/cache` directory from being deleted...

# kotlin-native

[serebit]

Is there a way to prevent the dependency tarballs in the .konan/cache directory from being deleted, like a Gradle property of some sort? This is for CI, where caching the tarballs directly and unpacking them each time would be optimal.

[svyatoslav.scherbina]

Is there a way to prevent the dependency tarballs in the .konan/cache directory from being deleted, like a Gradle property of some sort?

I don’t think so.
Does anything prevent you from preserving the entire .konan directory on CI?

[serebit]

Not any practical constraint, no. The main reason I'd rather just keep the cached tarballs is because it's both a time and cycle waste to re-compress those dependencies every time a CI job runs, which is what I'd end up doing for my GitLab CI setup. I could pre-download the tarballs and lock them in a prebuilt Docker image (which I'm doing for one of my projects), but I don't have the bandwidth to support this method for every single project I'm working on.

[serebit]

I'd actually be willing to look into contributing this behavior myself if it's something the team isn't opposed to.

[svyatoslav.scherbina]

The main reason I’d rather just keep the cached tarballs is because it’s both a time and cycle waste to re-compress those dependencies every time a CI job runs

If you just reuse the entire .konan directory for different invocation, you won’t need to re-compress the dependencies.
Note that you can override the location of .konan directory using KONAN_DATA_DIR environment variable.

[serebit]

Oh, sorry, I should've been more clear about that. The CI jobs run in a newly spun up docker container, and the directories selected for caching (including the .konan directory) are compressed into a zip file for storage until the next CI job runs. If I choose to cache the entire .konan directory, including the decompressed dependencies, my PC will have to spend time re-compressing all the dependency files every time, and this takes a pretty substantial amount of time in comparison to just keeping the tarballs. I'm already using the KONAN_DATA_DIR environment variable for the alternate solution, which is packing the tarballs into the Docker image when it's built, but it would be way easier for me (and save on my bandwidth) if I could just make the tarballs persist. Does that make sense?

[svyatoslav.scherbina]

Now I see. Thanks for clarification. Why do you need to compress .konan into a zip?

[serebit]

That's just how GitLab's CI works. If I mark a directory as needing to be cached, it'll be compressed into the overall cache zip file when the CI job ends.

[serebit]

If I could cache the tarballs, I wouldn't cache the entire .konan directory, I'd just cache the dependencies directory along with the kotlin-native-x directory.

[svyatoslav.scherbina]

Thanks for explanation!