How can caching and artifacts speed up Resource requests and limits on GitLab CI?

Caching and artifacts are essential techniques in GitLab CI that can significantly speed up resource requests and limits and improve overall pipeline efficiency. Caching allows frequently used dependencies to be stored and reused across different pipeline runs, reducing the amount of time spent fetching them. Artifacts, on the other hand, allow you to save the results of your builds or tests for later use in subsequent jobs in the pipeline, eliminating the need to redo work.

By properly configuring caching and artifacts, you can ensure that jobs have quick access to the resources they need, which in turn leads to faster execution times and more efficient resource utilization.

        cache:
          key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}
          paths:
            - vendor/
            - node_modules/

        job_name:
          stage: build
          script:
            - echo "Building the project..."
            - npm install
            - php composer.phar install

        artifacts:
          paths:
            - build/
          expire_in: 1 week