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Re: Speeding up XCode?
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Re: Speeding up XCode?


  • Subject: Re: Speeding up XCode?
  • From: Dietmar Planitzer <email@hidden>
  • Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 23:22:30 +0200


On Oct 17, 2005, at 8:26 PM, Rob Lockstone wrote:

I don't disagree with you. Xcode, or better yet Cocoa, needs to be fixed to deal better with large files. However, to date, Apple has not done very much to improve the situation. I wonder if they've ever profiled the code internally to see where the hot spot(s) are. I can't imagine they haven't! I imagine one approach would be to allow various text editing "bells and whistles" to be optionally turned on/off. But, I suppose it depends on what, exactly, is slowing things down.

I personally don't think that Cocoa's text system is the cause of the performance problems that the Xcode code editor has. First of all, the fact that Xcode really manages to make _everything_ slow, and be it as trivial stuff as resizing a project window, is already a good way to show that Cocoa is not necessarily the problem here.


I've just done a little unscientific test. I took a text file that contains the disassembler listing of a whole framework. It is 11MB in size and has 467.747 lines full of PowerPC assembler instructions.

TextEdit needs ca. 2 seconds to open that file on my 1.8GHz dual G5. You can freely move around with the text cursor using the cursor keys without any noticeable delay right after TextEdit has finished loading the file. Jumping to the end of the document by hitting the document end key results in a ca. 20 seconds pause in which TextEdit lays out the whole file.

Xcode needs around 2 second to open that file, just like TextEdit. However, when you try to move around with the cursor keys in the text file, every key press results in a very noticeable and highly annoying delay of at least one second. Pressing the document end key in order to jump to the end of the document results in the appearance of a progress bar inside the text editor window - which is quite nice - but also the situation that Xcode goes away for nearly two minutes until it has finished doing the layout and syntax coloring.

I think I don't need to mention that although Xcode has spent way too much time (in my opinion) to layout and syntax color the file, the syntax coloring was (as is usual) wrong. Most hex-numbers were only partially colored. I.e. the number 0x000045e8 was colored as expected, while 0x000045d8 was not. This is one of those long standing bugs where I have given up any hope that it will ever get fixed.

I personally suspect that the performance problems that the Xcode code editor has have more to do with the question how the syntax coloring and symbol gathering mechanism are implemented and especially how they are hooked into the Cocoa text system, then with the implementation of the Cocoa text system itself.

Anyway, slowness is an overall problem in Xcode - it's as if it is supposed to be a feature.

And yes, I also think that the fact that the debugger - after all those years - still has major problems working reliably and well with C++ code is supposed to be a feature. I simply no longer know how to otherwise explain that the debugger still likes to break multiple lines before or after a breakpoint but not on the breakpoint. Or why it shows <incomplete type> so often - and especially when you don't need it. And why it has that annoying tendency of showing the wrong source code file when it hits a breakpoint.

Let's just say it's all supposed to be a feature...


Regards,

Dietmar Planitzer

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References: 
 >Re: Speeding up XCode? (From: Stefan Werner <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Speeding up XCode? (From: Rob Lockstone <email@hidden>)

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