| I've just run some sick tests.
If you don't have an SSD, but do have more than one Mac and both have a fast connection like Firewire 800 or gigabit Ethernet, you might like this if you want faster builds.
Turn distributed builds off.
Create a RAM Drive on your second Mac. I'm assuming you're not using it. I use this AppleScript:
on run {} -- Alex Zavatone 2010 main()
end run
on main()
set myBlocks to 2097152 -- 1 GB in blocks set myGigs to 6 set myResult to display dialog "Desired size in GB for your RAM Disk:" default answer 6 set myGigs to the text returned of myResult -- as string set myBytes to myBlocks * myGigs set myShellScript to "diskutil erasevolume HFS+ \"RAM Disk\" `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://" & myBytes & "`"
do shell script myShellScript end Start
Make sure that File Sharing is on and that you are sharing your network connection of the second Mac over Gig Ethernet or Firewire 800. Connect the two computers using the fast net connection. Log on to the RAM Disk on the second computer.
Copy your project over to that volume and do a build.
I got a data transfer rate of 980 to 1008 MB/S when monitoring the disk access while building.
If there are any other disk IO heavy operations that may benefit from an approach like this, I'm interested in seeing what we can do.
What I dread is using up all the 16 GB of RAM on my main Mac. By logging on to a RAM disk that exists in another computer's memory space, I don't have to worry about that.
Interested in feedback. What do those of you with SSDs get for transfer times? |