What are the implications of setting "cache" to true?

[evbo]

Documentation Is:

• Missing
• Needed
• Confusing
• Not Sure?

Please Explain in Detail...

Please just add a 1 liner explaining what a "cache" is in the context of minification.

In general I know what a cache is - some (local) storage of files/data to reuse for avoiding redundant regeneration of (if no changes exist) for faster build times. But if there were only benefits to adding a cache then why even include it as an option? What are the implications of setting cache to true (for the typical use case where someone isn't using a custom minify - or is that the only reason you might not want to)?

Your Proposal for Changes

Something like this:

Enable file caching. Default path to cache directory: node_modules/.cache/terser-webpack-plugin. Enabling this option will < improve build speed at the cost of...? >

...

[alexander-akait]

@evbo

In general I know what a cache is - some (local) storage of files/data to reuse for avoiding redundant regeneration of (if no changes exist) for faster build times. But if there were only benefits to adding a cache then why even include it as an option? What are the implications of setting cache to true (for the typical use case where someone isn't using a custom minify - or is that the only reason you might not want to)?

Some platform/os doesn't support filesystem (use memory instead) so you should setup this to false. We setup this as true by default for next major release. Also some people disable cache for CI (it is allow calculate first build time and for other cases).

Enabling this option will < improve build speed at the cost of...? >

We can't say how it is improve build speed, it is depends on you system (filesystem) and hardware. 99% cases it is speed build, but in some cases it can decrease speed (example when you harddisk is overloaded, but it is rare use case, so you can safely enable cache by default).

[alexander-akait]

Feel free to feedback