minimize resource usage

Optimize performance by being selective about resource consumption - process only necessary data, avoid redundant operations, and use lightweight alternatives when possible.

Key strategies:

• Store hashes instead of full data: Rather than caching entire objects, store their hashes to reduce disk space and computation overhead
• Reduce data before processing: Filter or transform data to minimal required form before expensive operations like hashing
• Avoid redundant operations: Ensure expensive operations like hashing are performed only once and reused
• Use conditional loading: Only require/import modules when actually needed, and prefer require.resolve() over require() when you don’t need to execute the module

Example:

// Instead of storing full external nodes data
const externalNodesData = getExternalNodesData(externalNodes);
writeToCache(externalNodesData); // Large disk usage

// Store hash instead
const externalNodesHash = hashObject(getExternalNodesData(externalNodes));
writeToCache(externalNodesHash); // Minimal disk usage

// Conditional require
function assertBuilderPackageIsInstalled(packageName: string): void {
  try {
    require.resolve(packageName); // Lighter than require(packageName)
  } catch {
    throw new Error(`Package ${packageName} not found`);
  }
}

This approach can yield significant performance improvements - benchmarks show up to 6x speed improvements when reducing data before processing.