Large C# compile time increase?

Question

4.88/5 (8 votes)

See more:

I maintain a build system for building C# solutions.
The code base is componentized by VS solution files and there are currently about 160 components in the code base.
The automated builds are run on a dedicated build server using CruiseControl and NAnt to build the entire code base each build.

One of the components consists of about 120 C# projects. On development machines and up until recently on the build server a complete rebuild of this solution took between 3 and 4 minutes.

About 2 weeks ago, between one build and the next, the compile time for this component jumped to 16 minutes. No other component exhibited a similar increase in build time.

We assumed this had something to do with intermediate files hanging around somewhere, so I deleted the entire AccuRev workspace and repopulated it on the build machine.
Build times for this component dropped back to around 3 minutes for 10 builds (over 4 days) and then jumped back to 16 minutes.
After a couple of days I repeated the workspace delete and repopulate and the build times dropped back to 3 minutes for 5 builds this time before jumping back to 16 minutes.

I have archived log files, freed up disk space and defragmented the hard drive.

I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why this is happening.
This only occurs on the build machine, developer builds take 3-4 minutes.

If anyone has any tips on what might be causing a dramatic increase in compile time for a C# solution like this, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Thanks,

Posted 17-Jun-11 3:18am

Peter Mulholland

Add a Solution

Comments

thatraja 17-Jun-11 9:47am

Good question, 5!
I'm also waiting for the answers

wizardzz 17-Jun-11 13:29pm

yeah, I want to know, too.

Ciumac Sergiu 17-Jun-11 11:30am

Good question indeed.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Jun-11 14:21pm

I would say: not enough information. Anything could happen.
Now, do you use anything except MSBuild and XML projects types? Do you have both incremental and from-scratch builds?
--SA

Peter Mulholland 20-Jun-11 5:02am

No incremental builds, everything is "from scratch" or supposed to be.
[edit]
We call MSbuild with the /t:Clean flag first before each build.
Component builds are ordered by dependency, so when a component is built, it's dependencies will have been built already, or it can build any that haven't been.
[/edit]
We have 1 over-night build for sandcastle documentation.
There's some fxcop, unit tests and coverage stuff done after each component builds, however I have timestamps outputting at the start and end of the MSBuild call and each of the NAnt targets that perform other functions in my build script.
The time increase is in the MSBuild call, which unfortunately doesn't output any intermediate times.

I have picked up a book recently on MSBuild, but I haven't had the time to do much investigation on customizing the MSBuild targets to try to get more info on where the time is increasing.

We did also add Post Sharp to the build recently, but I think it had been in the build a while before this issue popped up.

Pantelis Chatzinikolis 7-Jul-11 22:41pm

The only thing I could think of is somehow a series of .resx files where created. It's the only thing I noticed that adds noticeable time to the builds.

1 solution

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

thatraja · Answer 1 · 2011-11-06T09:57:00

Solution 1

Hi, Today I have found this article. I think this would be useful for you.

Speed up Visual Studio Builds[^]

Posted 6-Nov-11 9:57am

thatraja

Comments

Peter Mulholland 7-Nov-11 8:02am

Thanks. I'd already tried the parallel builds flag (/m)with most of our MSBuild calls. I had to revert about half of them when they started failing to compile in parallel mode. That's probably something I should look into further. I'll have a look at the other suggestions in the article over lunch.

thatraja 7-Nov-11 8:18am

Fine, BTW if you find any better solution then post it as a Tip/Trick here.
Cheers.