You can always build from source in this scenario. The cache server lets you skip two things. First, you can prune the leaves of the tree of intermediate files

You can always build from source in this scenario. The cache server lets you skip two things. First, you can prune the leaves of the tree of intermediate files you might need. Second, where you do need to compile/build/link/package, etc., you can do only those steps that are altered by your changes. So you save CPU time and storage space. > why not just have your source code on said server in the first place, a la p4? That would be great. A version of git where cloning is almost a no-op, and building is downloading the package assuming you haven't changed anything. I'm not aware of how p4 allowing this. My recollection of perforce is that I still had most source files locally.