How expensive are github actions in terms of network traffic?

Question

one of the steps of my github test action for pull requests is installing 3rd party software via

- name: Install imagemagick and graphviz
        run: |
          sudo apt install graphviz
          sudo apt install imagemagick

The package size seems to be about 15MB, see https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php. That's not too bad. But it made me wonder: if I installed a package of, say 500MB, would the github servers have to download the 500MB every time the action is triggered? That would be bad..

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '21 at 12:22

Yes, it will download them each time, unless you will cache it. You can find more details here Caching APT packages in GitHub Actions workflow. You can also create your own docker image with pre installed packages and use that image in your pipeline. You will also find an example in above mention topic.

How expensive are github actions in terms of network traffic?

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