make a combined PR for some previous compathelper PRs

[bparbhu]

We recently had to update the master branch to keep up with github actions deprecations for github actions cache. So the PRs that we need to make sure work with the new master branch change are the ones generated by compathelper. There are four PRs we need to combine

#145

#144

#142

#136

We need to consolidate these PRs into a single PR to see if these changes will work and build properly.

[bparbhu]

was resolved in this PR #153