Any advice for speeding up the compile time in Flex Builder 3?

Question

I run Flex Builder 3 on a mac and as my project grows - the compile time gets longer and longer and longer. I am using some SWC\'s and there is a fair amount of code but it

Answer 1

In addition to the suggestions already mentioned, close any projects that you have open that you are not using.

Rich click on the Project in the Navigator view and select "Close Unrelated Projects".

Depending on how many projects you have open, this can lead to a significant improvements in compile time, as well as all around performance.

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

Answer 2

You can use WORKING SETS to compile just a set of your components that are part of the application that you are changing and not the whole project

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=build_6.html

Answer 3

I created RAM Disk with workspace and it gives up to 10% of better compilation time. Not much, but something.

Answer 4

You want at least 4 gigs on your computer if possible, and make sure to override the default memory settings that eclipse/flexbuilder gives to the application.

If you're not sure how to do this, you can find the flexbuilder app in /Applications, right click and choose "Show Package Contents". Then go into the contents file and edit the eclipse.ini file. Edit that file have memory settings of at least:

-vmargs -Xms768m -Xmx768m -XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m 

It's also worthwhile to go into the eclipse/flexbuilder preferences and to check the "Show heap status" box under Windows->Preferences->General (This is in eclipse with the FB plugin, I'm assuming it's also there for standalone FB).

This shows the current memory in the lower right of the window and has a little trash icon so you can force garbage collection.

I'd also suggest turning off automatic building of the project when your files change (you can force a build with cmd-B).

We had a huge project with quite a few modules files and performance in FlexBuilder 3 was decent with these steps.

Answer 5

The SDK 4.x.x introduced silly bug (see Adobe bugsystem, issue FB-27440), which causes projects with SVN or CVS meta data compile much slower than with SDK 3.x.x. On how it can be fixed, see here.

Answer 6

First of all, comments on some of the response:

1. There is no need to explicitly specify -incremental in Flex Builder because it uses incremental compilation by default.

2. -keep-generated-actionscript is a performance killer because it instructs the compiler to write out AS3 codes generated for MXML components in the middle of the compilation. File I/O in the middle of a compilation means unnecessary pauses and low CPU utilizations.

3. -optimize slows down linking because it instructs the linker to produce smaller SWFs. Note that -optimize=true|false doesn't have any effect on building SWCs because SWCs are libraries and have to be unoptimized.

4. I rarely mess with JVM settings because JVM knows its jobs well and tunes itself quite well at runtime. Most people make matter worse by setting various GC tuning parameters. That said, there are 3 settings most people understand and set correctly for their usage:

-Xmx (max heap size)

-server or -client (HotSpot Server or Client VM)

-XX:+UseSerialGC or -XX:+UseParallelGC (or other non-serial GC)

-server consistently outperforms -client by about 30% when running the Flex compiler. -XX:+UseParallelGC turns on the parallel garbage collector. ideal for multicore computer and when the computer still has CPU cycles to spare.

You may also want to check out HellFire Compiler Daemon (http://bytecode-workshop.com/). It uses multiple processor cores to compile multiple Flex applications at the same time. You can also run the compiler on a second machine via sockets (assuming that your second machine has faster CPUs and more memory).

In my opinion, use more modules than libraries and use HFCD.

Hope this helps.

-Clement