[QUESTION] $HOME variable and .m2 cache (runner - not manager)

[jbkc85]

To whom it may concern,

I recently downloaded this project and got it running - kudos to all btw...this is pretty freakin spectacular.

That being said, I am running into a wall trying to figure out why my ~/.m2 cache seems to be populating two different directories while using the actions/cache@v2 action.

What happens:

1. mvn clean install

• populates /runner/.m2
• populates /home/runner/.m2

2. 'check in cache'
3. reference cache

• cache downloads to /runner/.m2
• cache does not download to ~/.m2

I want to say something is going on here with the WORKSPACE/HOME variables, but I really have no idea and wanted to see if anyone else was running into this situation. I do apologize if its been mentioned, I have not been able to find it!

Is there something I have to do to have ~/.m2 always go to /home/runner instead of the /runner/ directory?

[jbkc85]

      - name: Cache Maven packages
        uses: actions/cache@v2
        with:
          path: ~/.m2
          key: ${{ runner.os }}-m2-${{ hashFiles('**/pom.xml') }}
          restore-keys: ${{ runner.os }}-m2

[toast-gear]

We aren't maven experts so I don't know off the top our my head but it won't actions-runner-controller related. We set HOME in the image https://github.com/actions-runner-controller/actions-runner-controller/blob/master/runner/Dockerfile#L70 however this overrriden if you are using the container attribute in your workflow actions/runner#1146. Perhaps you can try setting the XDG_CACHE_HOME environment variable to see if it gets respected?

I've transfered this to dicussion as it is not related to actions-runner-controller beyond it happens to be running your workflow.

[jbkc85]

I've transfered this to dicussion as it is not related to actions-runner-controller beyond it happens to be running your workflow.

Thanks for doing that @toast-gear. I do apologize for the issue creation!

I actually circumvented the issue (currently) and found out it has to do with the GITHUB_WORKDIR. For some reason, the top level of GITHUB_WORKDIR is considered HOME for this cache process. ie if GITHUB_WORKDIR=/runner/_work, then HOME for maven would be /runner/.m2. So I made GITHUB_WORKDIR=/home/runner/_work, and since the top level goes to /home/runner/.m2, everything is working together really well. Now I am just working on memory issues :-D