Doesn't support CMake presets + vcpkg manifest mode

[HunterZ]

Type of issue

Typo

Description

This doesn't seem to do anything when using CMakePresets.json + vcpkg.json, because the packages get installed to out/build/vcpkg_installed within the workspace, instead of to a global vcpkg location. Would be helpful to know how to handle this.

Page URL

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcpkg/consume/binary-caching-github-actions-cache

Content source URL

https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg-docs/blob/main/vcpkg/consume/binary-caching-github-actions-cache.md

Document Version Independent Id

413e9ed4-00f3-27e3-e4bf-24771a770459

Platform Id

ac2724a1-0241-39f7-a823-e558ee9b5a5c

Article author

@vicroms

Metadata

• ID: 413e9ed4-00f3-27e3-e4bf-24771a770459
• PlatformId: ac2724a1-0241-39f7-a823-e558ee9b5a5c
• Service: vcpkg

[dg0yt]

"binary-caching-github-actions-cache" is for caching binary archives for a given input configuration. It is not related to the location vcpkg_installed where the unpacked content of binary archives "gets installed to".

[HunterZ]

I guess I don't understand the point of any of vcpkg's own caching features then, and should probably just ignore them.

If I use actions/cache@v4 and cache the out/build/ and vcpkg/ directories in my workspace instead, everything seems to work fine.

Background:

I have a CMake project that uses vcpkg in manifest mode to pull down dependencies, plus a GitHub workflow to automate building of this project in Windows MSVC, Windows MSYS2 MinGW64, and Linux GCC. The workflow runs take a half hour, almost entirely due to vcpkg dependency rebuilds.

It looks to me like it's trying to cache stuff but failing:

Starting submission of zstd:x64-windows-static@1.5.7 to 1 binary cache(s) in the background
Elapsed time to handle zstd:x64-windows-static: 17 s
zstd:x64-windows-static package ABI: 30a7026f76aa41a9f0a0f4501f9f12391a97b54b4c3e6ba8e5cea883b09827e7
Completed submission of ixwebsocket[core,mbedtls,ssl]:x64-windows-static@11.4.5 to 0 binary cache(s) in 4.6 s

I always see this at the start of the next run's configure stage as a result:

Restored 0 package(s) from GitHub Actions Cache

Here are two consecutive runs over the same commit, with vcpkg debug logging enabled:

1. https://github.com/HunterZ/rustLaunchSite/actions/runs/14544045192
2. https://github.com/HunterZ/rustLaunchSite/actions/runs/14544312270

Workflow: https://github.com/HunterZ/rustLaunchSite/blob/b38ff8b4d621162c6ae246b03d74eed96fa585a6/.github/workflows/rustLaunchSite.yml

[HunterZ]

Possibly related: microsoft/vcpkg#45073

[ADKaster]

The way it's supposed to work is that when you a vcpkg install (or use the CMake toolchain file to do that on your behalf), the vcpkg tool does a hash of your compiler and vcpkg triple and a few other things. It looks in the binary cache for entries that match that, and them gives you an almost-zero time copy from the binary cache into your out/vcpkg_installed location.

This works locally with a file binary cache, but like you noticed, the recent changes to GitHub caches that went live on the 15th of April broke the x-gha binary cache option.

[vicroms]

Unfortunately, we are removing the x-gha backend. Reasoning given here: microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1662

[HunterZ]

Thanks for the follow-up. I guess this means the linked article needs to be deprecated.

Might be helpful if the article gets replaced with hints on how best to craft an actions/cache setup. I ended up guessing at one that seems to work, but I have no idea whether it's optimal.