Currently, the synth step in my code pipeline looks something like this:

            synth=pipelines.ShellStep(
                "Synth",
                input=pipelines.CodePipelineSource.connection(
                    self.repository,
                    self.branch,
                    connection_arn="arn:aws:codestar-connections:us-east-1:613431292675:connection/db5d023d-5eed-4bb7-808c-df5d5fe5452f",
                    trigger_on_push=True,
                ),
                commands=[
                    "cd eval-infra",
                    "npm install -g aws-cdk",  # Installs the cdk cli on Codebuild
                    "pip install -r requirements.txt",  # Instructs Codebuild to install required packages
                    "npx cdk synth EvalInfraPipeline",
                ],
                primary_output_directory="eval-infra/cdk.out",
            ),

Unfortunately, this takes almost two minutes to run – and the bulk of this is the npm install and the pip install commands. Two minutes is not a lot in isolation, but when combined with the rest of the build process, it adds up to 10 minute+ build times.

Is it possible to use caching somehow to speed this up? I looked into using a CodeBuildStep instead, with some kind of local or s3 cache, but I couldn’t find a working example. Has anyone done something like this before?