setup-grade action: Consider using D: drive on Windows Runners to address performance issues

[cloudshiftchris]

On GH Windows runners there are known limitations with the performance of the C: drive; for tasks that write large amounts of data (Gradle caches) the performance at times can have multi-minute delays.

Other setup actions, such as setup-go and setup-dotnet already use D: drive to workaround this.

Users can workaround this (if they know to do so) by:

    # https://github.com/actions/runner-images/issues/8755
    - name: "Configure Windows Storage"
      if: runner.os == 'Windows'
      shell: bash
      run: |
        mkdir -p d:/a/.gradle
        echo "GRADLE_USER_HOME=d:/a/.gradle" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"

Proposing that the setup-gradle action set GRADLE_USER_HOME, if not already set, to a location under d:/a. This is perhaps a breaking change in behaviour (it invalidates the gradle user home cache entirely, starting from scratch), so perhaps an opt-in until next minor release.

The changes in setup-go relating to this are here: https://github.com/actions/setup-go/pull/393/files

[bigdaz]

Thanks for pointing out this issue and the recommendation. Yes, this would be a breaking change because workflows may already be bound to the current Gradle User Home location.

Have you found the above workaround to make a significant different to performance?

[cloudshiftchris]

Adding in the above snippet took a GH build w/ a small-ish Gradle (really just a few custom plugins for versioning as the main build on this one was dotnet) from an erratic 9-20m to consistent 5-6m.

[cloudshiftchris]

This (from kotest) is perhaps a more reliable approach - using a link for .gradle instead of relocating it; this would preserve any existing use of the current gradle home location (as the location doesn't really change, at least from a consumer perspective). There may be some rough edges with consumers (other than Gradle) that don't properly process the link.

[cloudshiftchris]

Related: setup-action 3.5.0 has the new super-fancy cache-cleanup (which works amazing btw, previous cleanup wasn't catching old gradle distributions etc, nice and clean now).

That enhancement downloads (or restores from GH cache) the latest stable Gradle distribution; it stores this under the user home, which on Windows runners is on the Very Slow C: drive (a lot of the latencies noted above were from restoring multiple gradle distributions from cache). Should likely be in runner.temp instead (on Windows runners this is already on the D: drive).

Provision Gradle 8.9
  Received 88080384 of 135856402 (64.8%), 83.9 MBs/sec
  Cache Size: ~130 MB (135856402 B)
  "C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\tar.exe" -xf D:/a/_temp/14c14b63-d717-40e3-b74c-4241c90a5343/cache.tzst -P -C D:/a/****-****/****-**** --force-local --use-compress-program "zstd -d"
  Cache restored successfully
  Restored Gradle distribution gradle-8.9 from cache to C:\Users\runneradmin\gradle-installations\downloads\gradle-8.9-bin.zip
  "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe" -NoLogo -NoProfile -NonInteractive -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Command "$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop' ; try { Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.ZipFile } catch { } ; try { [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory('C:\Users\runneradmin\gradle-installations\downloads\gradle-8.9-bin.zip', 'C:\Users\runneradmin\gradle-installations\installs', $true) } catch { if (($_.Exception.GetType().FullName -eq 'System.Management.Automation.MethodException') -or ($_.Exception.GetType().FullName -eq 'System.Management.Automation.RuntimeException') ){ Expand-Archive -LiteralPath 'C:\Users\runneradmin\gradle-installations\downloads\gradle-8.9-bin.zip' -DestinationPath 'C:\Users\runneradmin\gradle-installations\installs' -Force } else { throw $_ } } ;"
  Received 135856402 of 135856402 (100.0%), 64.6 MBs/sec
  Extracted Gradle 8.9 to C:\Users\runneradmin\gradle-installations\installs\gradle-8.9
  Provisioned Gradle executable C:\Users\runneradmin\gradle-installations\installs\gradle-8.9\bin\gradle.bat

[bigdaz]

@cloudshiftchris I'm not sure that RUNNER_TEMP is the right place to install Gradle, but it's an option if it makes a difference. Can you tell me what RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE points to on a Windows runner?

[bigdaz]

Fixing #270 will somewhat mitigate the performance overhead added by provisioning the latest Gradle as part of cache-cleanup.

[cloudshiftchris]

@cloudshiftchris I'm not sure that RUNNER_TEMP is the right place to install Gradle, but it's an option if it makes a difference. Can you tell me what RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE points to on a Windows runner?

Below are all the env vars for windows-latest as of an hour ago (this is dumped out as the first step in workflow, before anything else muddies the environment).

RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE=C:\hostedtoolcache\windows - this is why tooling such as setup-go create symlinks in here to the D: drive, so things show up "where they are expected to be" but are actually on the fast D: drive.

Arguably the Gradle install for cache cleanup is temporary/transient - it's internal, for that sole purpose. Likely should either be in a temporary dir, or homed alongside other stuff in .gradle. Doesn't seem worth creating another place to store "gradle stuff" if it isn't transient.

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  ACTIONS_RUNNER_ACTION_ARCHIVE_CACHE=C:\actionarchivecache\
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  ACTIONS_RUNTIME_URL=https://pipelinesghubeus12.actions.githubusercontent.com/wEbjysn6J8ywOP1seEwzFimKdaeFcV2yL35oDfmCYrijQTXtFQ/
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  ANDROID_NDK=C:\Android\android-sdk\ndk\25.2.9519653
  ANDROID_NDK_HOME=C:\Android\android-sdk\ndk\25.2.9519653
  ANDROID_NDK_LATEST_HOME=C:\Android\android-sdk\ndk\26.3.11579264
  ANDROID_NDK_ROOT=C:\Android\android-sdk\ndk\25.2.9519653
  ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=C:\Android\android-sdk
  ANT_HOME=C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\ant\tools\apache-ant-1.10.14
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  CommonProgramFiles=C:\Program Files\Common Files
  CommonProgramW6432=C:\Program Files\Common Files
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  EdgeWebDriver=C:\SeleniumWebDrivers\EdgeDriver
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  GITHUB_ACTION_REF=cd1afbd7852b7ad7b1b7a9a1b03efebd3b0a1820
  GITHUB_ACTION_REPOSITORY=hmarr/debug-action
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  GOROOT_1_20_X64=C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\go\1.20.14\x64
  GOROOT_1_21_X64=C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\go\1.21.12\x64
  GOROOT_1_22_X64=C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\go\1.22.5\x64
  GRADLE_HOME=C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\gradle\tools\gradle-8.8
  GeckoWebDriver=C:\SeleniumWebDrivers\GeckoDriver
  HOMEDRIVE=C:
  HOMEPATH=\Users\runneradmin
  IEWebDriver=C:\SeleniumWebDrivers\IEDriver
  ImageOS=win22
  ImageVersion=20240707.1.0
  JAVA_HOME=C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\Java_Temurin-Hotspot_jdk\8.0.412-8\x64
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  JAVA_HOME_17_X64=C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\Java_Temurin-Hotspot_jdk\17.0.11-9\x64
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  M2=C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\maven\apache-maven-3.8.7\bin
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  OS=Windows_NT
  PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC
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  PGROOT=C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\14
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  PHPROOT=c:\tools\php
  PIPX_BIN_DIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\pipx_bin
  PIPX_HOME=C:\Program Files (x86)\pipx
  POWERSHELL_DISTRIBUTION_CHANNEL=GitHub-Actions-win22
  POWERSHELL_UPDATECHECK=Off
  PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE=AMD64
  PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER=AMD64 Family 25 Model 1 Stepping 1, AuthenticAMD
  PROCESSOR_LEVEL=25
  PROCESSOR_REVISION=0101
  PSModuleAnalysisCachePath=C:\PSModuleAnalysisCachePath\ModuleAnalysisCache
  PSModulePath=C:\\Modules\azurerm_2.1.0;C:\\Modules\azure_2.1.0;C:\Users\packer\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\130\Tools\PowerShell\Modules\
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[bigdaz]

@cloudshiftchris I've implemented the fix to use D: where possible: the fix is in the v4 release candidate.

If you could test it out using gradle/actions/[email protected] that would be helpful.

[cloudshiftchris]

@bigdaz thanks for churning through everything in 4.0!

Have tested out 4.0.0-rc.1 - after removing previous D: workaround and dropping in 4.0.0-rc.1, happy to report that all is well - everything ran as expected, the performance gains remained, the log out put confirms that GRADLE_USER_HOME is set on D:.

[bigdaz]

Thanks for trying it out. I'll likely let the RC soak for a couple of weeks before pushing a v4 tag. (I'm on vacation the coming weeks and won't have time to deal with any fallout).