aspect ci warming - Aspect Build

Rosetta’s warming job (Workflows 5.x) ran two commands: rosetta run warming to populate the caches, then /etc/aspect/workflows/bin/warming_archive to upload them to the warming bucket. aspect ci warming replaces both with a single task: it cleans the runner’s prior Bazel state, runs bazel build --nobuild against the given targets to populate the repository, output, and Bazel caches, and, on an Aspect Workflows runner, uploads the populated caches to the warming bucket itself. Warming runs on a schedule (typically daily) to pre-populate an Aspect Workflows runner group’s shared caches, so the first real CI job of the day starts warm instead of building everything from cold.

What changed

Area	Rosetta	`aspect ci warming`
Invocation	`rosetta run warming` then `/etc/aspect/workflows/bin/warming_archive`	`aspect ci warming -- //...` (one step; runs the archiver itself on a runner)
Targets	Whole repo (from the `.aspect/workflows/config.yaml` warming task)	Positional patterns, default `...` (e.g. `aspect ci warming -- //services/...`)
Cache populate	`rosetta run warming`	`bazel build --nobuild` against the targets
Archive upload	Separate `warming_archive` invocation	Built in, invoked automatically on a Workflows runner
Off a Workflows runner	n/a	The cache-populate step still runs; the archive step is skipped with a warning
Workflows config	Needs `.aspect/workflows/config.yaml` with a `warming` task	None

Configuration

aspect ci warming takes positional target patterns plus a few flags:

Targets (positional, default ...): the Bazel target patterns to warm. ... expands to all rule targets in the package at and beneath the current directory.
--bazel-flag=<flag> (repeatable): extra flags forwarded to the underlying bazel build (e.g. --bazel-flag=--config=ci).
--bazel-startup-flag=<flag> (repeatable): extra Bazel startup flags.

aspect ci warming -- //...                       # warm everything
aspect ci warming -- //services/... //libs/...    # warm a subset
aspect ci warming --bazel-flag=--config=ci -- //...

Examples

Run warming on a schedule against your main branch. Before: .aspect/workflows/config.yaml plus a warming job running rosetta run warming + warming_archive. After: a scheduled CI job:

The warming task itself doesn’t need the setup-aspect plugin: it always runs on an Aspect Workflows CI runner where aspect is already on the PATH, and it makes no vanilla bazel calls. The GitHub Actions example still uses the action because it provides the auth aspect needs to post its status check; on other providers, supply ASPECT_API_TOKEN instead (see the comments in the examples).

name: Aspect Workflows Warming

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 12 * * *'  # 12:00 UTC
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: read    # actions/checkout
  id-token: write   # artifact uploads and the PR summary comment

jobs:
  warming:
    runs-on: [self-hosted, aspect-workflows, aspect-default]
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - uses: aspect-build/setup-aspect@ebca96eb49ef58c00d4226de8bd3a0813507dd87 # v2026.38.3
        with:
          aspect-api-token: ${{ secrets.ASPECT_API_TOKEN }}
      - name: Warming
        run: aspect ci warming --task:name warming -- //...

steps:
  - label: ":fire: Warming"
    agents:
      queue: aspect-default
    command: aspect ci warming --task:name warming -- //...
    secrets:
      - ASPECT_API_TOKEN

warming:
  tags: [aspect-workflows, aspect-default]
  stage: CI
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "schedule"'
  script:
    - aspect ci warming --task:name warming -- //...
# Set ASPECT_API_TOKEN as a masked CI/CD variable in Settings → CI/CD → Variables.

workflows:
  aspect-workflows-warming:
    jobs:
      - warming
    when:
      and:
        - equal:
          - scheduled_pipeline
          - << pipeline.trigger_source >>
        - equal:
          - aspect-workflows-warming
          - << pipeline.schedule.name >>

jobs:
  warming:
    machine: true
    resource_class: YOUR-ORG/aspect-default
    working_directory: /mnt/ephemeral/workdir
    steps:
      - checkout
      - run:
          name: Warming
          command: aspect ci warming --task:name warming -- //...
# Set ASPECT_API_TOKEN as a project environment variable or context secret.

Each provider triggers the job on its own schedule: a GitHub Actions schedule: cron, a Buildkite scheduled pipeline (Settings > Schedules > New Schedule), a GitLab pipeline schedule (Build > Pipeline schedules > New schedule), or a CircleCI scheduled pipeline named aspect-workflows-warming. The examples use 0 12 * * *, 12:00 UTC. Point it at your main branch and run it as often as your cache churn warrants (daily is typical).

​What changed

​Configuration

​Examples

What changed

Configuration

Examples