A visual guide to GitLab CI/CD caching

Navigating GitLab CI/CD's decentralized structure often requires understanding the distinct roles of cache and artifacts in sharing content between jobs. While artifacts are essential when a job relies on outputs from a previous job, caches serve to speed up processes without being crucial to job completion. This guide elucidates how to implement caching in GitLab CI/CD pipelines, illustrating local cache setups using Docker volumes and bind mounts, and detailing distributed cache configurations with S3 for shared access across multiple runners and hosts. By using predefined variables like CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME and CI_JOB_NAME, developers can tie caches to specific branches or jobs, enhancing efficiency. The document aims to simplify complex configurations, offering a visual cheatsheet alongside reference documentation to tackle real-life scenarios, such as setting up caches for jobs within the same stage across different runners and hosts.

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