Using cargo-chef increased my build time from 5 minutes to 25 mintues

[kingsleyh]

Hi

I have a monorepo with a workspace at the root and each micro-service as a cargo project.

when I copy all the files from the root to docker e..g COPY . . and then run the cargo-chef commands as shown in the README - in the chef cook --release it compiles and builds my entire workspace including all the binaries which takes a long time.

Then it does the build release for the binary I actually want:

RUN cargo build --release --bin image-categorisation-service

Is there a way cargo-chef can avoid building the entire workspace when I just want to release the image-categorisation-service binary in a docker image

using cargo-chef has increased the build time for releasing just the image-categorisation-service from 5 minutes to 25 minutes because it's building the entire workspace

ARG RUST_VERSION=1.78.0
ARG APP_NAME=image-categorisation-service

# Install cargo-chef
FROM rust:${RUST_VERSION} AS chef
# We only pay the installation cost once,
# it will be cached from the second build onwards
RUN cargo install cargo-chef
WORKDIR /app

# Prepare the recipe
FROM chef AS planner
COPY . .
RUN cargo chef prepare --recipe-path recipe.json

# Build the project
FROM chef AS builder
COPY --from=planner /app/recipe.json recipe.json
# Build dependencies - this is the caching Docker layer!
RUN cargo chef cook --release --recipe-path recipe.json
# Build application
COPY . .
RUN cargo build --release --bin image-categorisation-service

# Setup the Runtime
FROM debian:bookworm-slim AS runtime
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=builder /app/target/release/image-categorisation-service /usr/local/bin
CMD ["/usr/local/bin/image-categorisation-service"]

[kingsleyh]

adding in sccache seems to bring down the time from my non cargo-chef build from 5 mins to 3 mins. But if I put cargo-chef back in - then it goes up from 3 mins to 9 mins.

So I guess for my monorepo style rust setup cargo-chef is not suitable.

[LukeMathWalker]

You need to pass the --bin option to both cargo-chef commands, just as you are doing for your cargo build.

[kingsleyh]

Thanks :) - I tried that but it's still a lot slower at around 6 minutes compared to 3 minutes without cargo-chef. It seems to compile my service twice - once in the cook and then again in the build and it seems to have a lot more dependencies to build also.

[kingsleyh]

without cargo-chef:

#16 156.3    Compiling image-categorisation-service v0.1.0 (/app/image-categorisation-service)
#16 170.2     Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 2m 50s

with cargo-chef:

#15 [builder 2/4] RUN cargo chef cook --release --recipe-path recipe.json --bin image-categorisation-service
#15 181.7    Compiling image-categorisation-service v0.0.1 (/app/image-categorisation-service)
#15 182.1     Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 3m 01s

#17 [builder 4/4] RUN cargo build --release --bin image-categorisation-service
#17 32.19    Compiling image-categorisation-service v0.1.0 (/app/image-categorisation-service)
#17 43.91     Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 31.55s

[LukeMathWalker]

It's expected that it takes a comparable amount of time if you're starting without a cache. With a cache hit, those 3 minutes disappear.

[kingsleyh]

This is running in my CI build in github actions - do you expect the caching would work like that in the free runners on github? Running several times I didn't see any improvement in the time.

[kingsleyh]

I've add this to my build-push-action in the github actions yml

cache-from: type=gha
cache-to: type=gha,mode=max

and now I can see the layers being cached - unfortunately the time taken for the layers to be exported/imported from github actions negates the time saved :(

so its still significantly faster to not use cargo-chef with github actions in my case.

[kingsleyh]

maybe I can cache in the S3 bucket also for the build-push-action to speed up the import/export part

[kingsleyh]

it's a bit faster with the S3 cache - but even with no code changes the build step still compiles quite a lot of dependencies - I was expecting that with no code changes - it would not compile anything as would be all cached.

[LukeMathWalker]

it's a bit faster with the S3 cache - but even with no code changes the build step still compiles quite a lot of dependencies - I was expecting that with no code changes - it would not compile anything as would be all cached.

What are you referring to here as "build step"?

[kingsleyh]

I was referring to the last part of the Dockerfile where the build --release is called - so after the cook. I only changed some lines in the Dockerfile and not in any of the code - but the build --release still compiled some things that had already been compiled in the cook stage.

[LukeMathWalker]

Understanding why that is the case would require a reproducible example for me to analyse.

[tubarao312]

Hey! @kingsleyh I'm just now learning Github Actions but I had the same trouble as you and ended up finding a solution:

• I cache the buildx-cache file in GitHub action cache instead of using the built-in method (you could do it wherever you want - I learned about it in this blog post.
• On subsequent builds, it hits and the file is way smaller. I'm not really sure why, it seems like the built-in gha mode caches and pulls a lot more things. It also seems like it does a lot of extracting.

  build-and-push:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # Checkout the code so we can build the Docker image
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      # Set up Docker Buildx for multi-platform builds
      - name: Set up Docker Buildx
        uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3

      # Log in to GitHub Container Registry
      - name: Login to GitHub Container Registry
        uses: docker/login-action@v3
        with:
          registry: ghcr.io
          username: ${{ github.actor }}
          password: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      # Cache the Cargo dependencies to speed up the build
      - uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          path: /tmp/.buildx-cache
          key: service-${{ runner.os }}-buildx-cache

      # Save the latest commit hash to an environment variable so we can use it in the Dockerfile
      - name: Set commit hash
        run: | 
          echo "COMMIT_HASH=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)"
          echo "COMMIT_HASH=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)" >> $GITHUB_ENV

      # Build and push the Docker image for the changed service
      - name: Build and push Docker image
        uses: docker/build-push-action@v6
        with:
          context: services/${{ matrix.service }}
          push: true
          tags: |
            ghcr.io/${{ github.repository_owner }}/service:latest
            ghcr.io/${{ github.repository_owner }}/service:${{ env.COMMIT_HASH }}
          cache-from: type=local,src=/tmp/.buildx-cache
          cache-to: type=local,dest=/tmp/.buildx-cache-new

      # Move the new cache to the original location
      - name: Move cache to original location
        run: |
          rm -rf /tmp/.buildx-cache
          mv /tmp/.buildx-cache-new /tmp/.buildx-cache

      # Output the image digest so we can use it in other jobs
      - name: Image digest
        run: echo ${{ steps.build-push.outputs.digest }}

And here's my Dockerfile (it's the same as the examples)

# Start from the official rust image and install cargo-chef
FROM lukemathwalker/cargo-chef:latest-rust-1 AS chef
WORKDIR /app

# Plan the build. If this has already been done, no need to re-do it
FROM chef AS planner
COPY . .
# Print all the files in the current directory
RUN ls
RUN cargo chef prepare --recipe-path recipe.json

# Build the dependencies
FROM chef AS builder 
COPY --from=planner /app/recipe.json recipe.json
# Build dependencies - this is the caching Docker layer!
RUN cargo chef cook --release --recipe-path recipe.json
# Build application
COPY . .
RUN cargo build --release --bin market-price-scrapper

# Use a minimal base image for the final build
FROM ubuntu:latest AS runtime

# Set working directory
WORKDIR /app

# Copy the built binary from the builder stage
COPY --from=builder /app/target/release/market-price-scrapper /app/market-price-scrapper

# Run the binary
ENTRYPOINT ["/app/market-price-scrapper"]