Long time of building Flutter apps (Android platform)

[Roman-Dzerkal]

If you are looking for help, please confirm the following...

• I confirm I have searched the Docs, Codemagic Sample Projects, and GitHub Discussions.
• I confirm the software versions on my local computer match the ones in CI environment (e.g. Xcode version, Gradle version). See here
• I confirm I am able to do a fresh clone of the repository and build the project on my local computer.

Which mobile framework are you using?

Flutter (Dart)

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a Flutter app
2. Connect Codemagic to the app using Github
3. Run building in Codemagic

Expected results

Fast building Android apps without downloading NDK and Android SDK every time

Actual results

Each build for the Android platform is accompanied by downloading the NDK and Android SDK, which in turn increases the build time significantly (up to 10 minutes). Why is this happening? What are some ways to speed up the build or disable downloading the above tools? I use the free plan and 500 minutes per month, which can run out pretty quickly with such long builds.

Build id (optional)

68f1060501d11cbfa2060346

[Becca-Saka]

Hello @Roman-Dzerkal,

You can use build caching to reduce the time spent re-downloading dependencies during each Android build.

Here’s an example setup you can add to your codemagic.yaml:

cache:
  cache_paths:
    - ~/.gradle/caches
    - ~/.gradle/wrapper
    - ~/.pub-cache
    - /usr/local/share/android-sdk/build-tools
    - /usr/local/share/android-sdk/ndk

A few things to note:

• The cache size limit for personal accounts is 3 GB.
• The cache only takes effect after a successful build. This means the first run will still download dependencies, but subsequent ones should be faster.
• Cached data is retained for 14 days. Codemagic will re-download those components automatically.

This should help you save time and build minutes in future runs.

[Roman-Dzerkal]

@Becca-Saka so, should I add only .../ndk and .../build-tools paths and thats all, right?

[Becca-Saka]

Yes

[Roman-Dzerkal]

@Becca-Saka after that I got message that ...its size 4.38 GB exceeds maximum allowed size of 3 GB :D

[Becca-Saka]

Well, that means the size is still too big, there is nothing I can do in this instance.

One thing I can suggest is to find which of the 2 can fit into our 3 GB cache allowance and cache that, but the other would still be downloaded every time.

[Roman-Dzerkal]

@Becca-Saka I was thinking about "Pay as you go" subscription. It has 10Gb cache storage. But I didn't find information does it include 500 free minutes, or each build session must be paid? In this case I would use free minutes with larger cache storage. What do you think?

Update:
I found that "Pay as you go" includes build minutes. So, in this case, I can use 10Gb storage
Thank you!