Caching setup steps such as installing PHP when using Github Actions - github-actions

Question

I've got a workflow that has some setup steps that install php with a bunch of extensions & composer.
Is it possible to cache the Install PHP and Install Composer & Dependencies so these steps don't have to happen on every run?
These steps combined take about 4 mins of a 5 min run.
name: Build
on:
workflow_call:
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
path: ./src
- name: Install PHP
run: |
sudo apt-get update -y && export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive DEBCONF_NONINTERACTIVE_SEEN=true
echo "tzdata tzdata/Areas select Europe" >> /tmp/preseed.cfg
echo "tzdata tzdata/Zones/Europe select Berlin" >> /tmp/preseed.cfg
sudo apt install software-properties-common -y
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install php8.1 -y --quiet
sudo apt-get install php8.1-dev libmcrypt-dev php-pear php-xml php8.1-xml -y
sudo pecl channel-update pecl.php.net
sudo apt-get install -y libapache2-mod-php8.1 php8.1-common php8.1-gmp php8.1-curl php8.1-soap php8.1-bcmath php8.1-intl php8.1-mbstring php8.1-xmlrpc php8.1-mysql php8.1-gd php8.1-xml php8.1-cli php8.1-zip
sudo rm /usr/bin/php; sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/php8.1 /usr/bin/php
- name: Install Composer & Dependencies
run: |
cd ./src/ || exit 99
sudo apt-get install -y git zip libzip-dev openssh-client libmcrypt-dev
sudo curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
cp auth.json.pipeline auth.json
sudo composer self-update --2
composer install --no-dev --verbose --prefer-dist --no-ansi --no-interaction

Answer 1

I would recommend using Setup PHP and Install PHP Dependencies with Composer GitHub Actions instead of manually installing PHP and Composer with dependencies.
These actions already have a caching mechanism and provide many interesting and valuable things additionally.
For example:
name: PHP
on:
workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout#v3
- uses: 'shivammathur/setup-php#v2'
name: Setup PHP
with:
php-version: '8.1'
- uses: 'ramsey/composer-install#v2'
name: Install Composer & Dependencies
- name: Run Script
run: |
php -v
composer -v
Running this WF on my little test PHP project with few dependencies takes about 30s without cache and 20s when cache exists.
Execution demo: Screenshot.
Cache demo: Screenshot.
In addition, there is a Cache GitHub action that can be used if you need manually cache some things for your workflow.
Learn more about managing caches.