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feat: switch from GitLab caching to Registry caching for docker builds

Andrew Newdigaterequested to merge
docker-caching-in-registry into main

Looking for performance improvements, this switches from GitLab CI tasks to registry cache provider.

Using native image caches is likely to be faster: see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/gitlab-dedicated/instrumentor/-/merge_requests/4314 for real-world results.

@jburnitz reported 15-20 minutes just to push and pull files from the cache using GitLab caching: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/gitlab-dedicated/instrumentor/-/jobs/8199915708#L909

Caching

By default, caching is enabled for Docker tasks.

Caching will store cache images in the $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/cache registry. All cache tags start with the prefix of cache- to allow for easy cleanup.

Two cache key schemes are used:

  1. BRANCH_REGISTRY_CACHE_KEY for branches
  2. DEFAULT_BRANCH_REGISTRY_CACHE_KEY - for default branch.

Please review the template definition for details, but these can be overridden depending on project requirements.

There are three caching modes:

  1. For branches: docker buildx will read from the branch cache and the default branch cache, and write the branch cache.
  2. For main branch: docker buildx will read from and write to the default branch cache.
  3. For tags: docker buildx will read from the default branch cache and not write to the cache.

cc @jburnitz

Edited by Andrew Newdigate

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