How can caching and artifacts speed up ARM vs x86 builds on GitLab CI?

Caching and artifacts are critical components in optimizing build processes, especially when dealing with different architectures like ARM and x86 in GitLab CI. By effectively utilizing caching mechanisms and storing build artifacts, you can significantly reduce the time required for subsequent builds. This is particularly beneficial in CI/CD pipelines where speed is of the essence.

When a build process is run, GitLab CI can cache dependencies or files that are rarely changed. This means that once your dependencies are downloaded during the first build, they can be reused in future builds, saving time. Additionally, storing artifacts that are created during the build process allows you to quickly access and use these components in later stages of your pipeline, reducing redundancy.

For example, when building applications for both ARM and x86 architectures, you can cache the compiled binaries specific to each architecture. This allows each subsequent build to skip the compilation step for unchanged code, and only recompile what is necessary, hence speeding up the build process.

Here’s an example GitLab CI configuration snippet demonstrating how to use caching and artifacts: