The `node-version` input is optional. If not supplied, the node version from PATH will be used. However, it is recommended to always specify Node.js version and don't rely on the system one.
The action will first check the local cache for a semver match. If unable to find a specific version in the cache, the action will attempt to download a version of Node.js. It will pull LTS versions from [node-versions releases](https://github.com/actions/node-versions/releases) and on miss or failure will fall back to the previous behavior of downloading directly from [node dist](https://nodejs.org/dist/).
For information regarding locally cached versions of Node.js on GitHub hosted runners, check out [GitHub Actions Virtual Environments](https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments).
**Note:** Like the other values, `*` will get the latest [locally-cached Node.js version](https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/blob/main/images/linux/Ubuntu2004-Readme.md#nodejs), or the latest version from [actions/node-versions](https://github.com/actions/node-versions/blob/main/versions-manifest.json), depending on the [`check-latest`](docs/advanced-usage.md#check-latest-version) input.
`current`/`latest`/`node` always resolve to the latest [dist version](https://nodejs.org/dist/index.json).
That version is then downloaded from actions/node-versions if possible, or directly from Node.js if not.
Since it will not be cached always, there is possibility of hitting rate limit when downloading from dist
It's **always** recommended to commit the lockfile of your package manager for security and performance reasons. For more information consult the "Working with lockfiles" section of the [Advanced usage](docs/advanced-usage.md#working-with-lockfiles) guide.
The action has a built-in functionality for caching and restoring dependencies. It uses [actions/cache](https://github.com/actions/cache) under the hood for caching global packages data but requires less configuration settings. Supported package managers are `npm`, `yarn`, `pnpm` (v6.10+). The `cache` input is optional, and caching is turned off by default.
The action defaults to search for the dependency file (`package-lock.json` or `yarn.lock`) in the repository root, and uses its hash as a part of the cache key. Use `cache-dependency-path` for cases when multiple dependency files are used, or they are located in different subdirectories.
See the examples of using cache for `yarn`/`pnpm` and `cache-dependency-path` input in the [Advanced usage](docs/advanced-usage.md#caching-packages-data) guide.
