CF Builder Massive Memory Usage is Killing my Mac

[AvantSG]

Does anyone know if there is a way to "tune" or otherwise get CFBuilder NOT to chew up so much Memory? I'm on a Mac Pro w/ 4 GB of Ram. It runs everything just as it should. I open CFBuilder and everything slows WAY down till I have to reboot to de-mangly my box.

Asside from switching to CFEclipse or DW, can anyone tell me if there is something on my end that I can do? This has been a persistent problem with CFBuilder since the start and since it's not been fixed so I assume it's not at the top of Adobe's todo list.

Thanks in advance.

[Adam Cameron.]

Are you running CFB stand-alone of as a plug-in?  What JVM settings are you using?

If you do run CFE instead, do you not get this memory blow-out?  They're both built atop of Eclipse after-all, so it might be an Eclipse issue rather than specifically CFB (it amounts to the same thing, but it'll help troubleshoot the problem).

Does it consume memory just idling, or are you opening specific sizes or types of files that seems to cause it?

Does it consume memory when you do like debugging or use specific CFB features?

Have you tried de-/re-installing?

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Adam

[AvantSG]

I've not used CFE for a bit. CFB runs as standalone. JVM settings would be the default I imagine.

It does seem to slow down a lot more on larger files. It chews up about 250-300MB of RAM when I first open it up. If I open up files, it takes up more... but I've not seen it dip below ~250MB. I've had to restart my box a couple of times when it climbed above 700MB. Just not sure if this is normal.

Would reinstalling really fix it?

Thanks

[Adam Cameron.]

I've not used CFE for a bit.

Sure.  But as part of troubleshooting your problem, you could try.

It does seem to slow down a lot more on larger files. It chews up about 250-300MB of RAM when I first open it up. If I open up files, it takes up more... but I've not seen it dip below ~250MB. I've had to restart my box a couple of times when it climbed above 700MB. Just not sure if this is normal.

I don't have CFB installed any more (£200 is too steep for me, when considering what little that I would use that CFB gives me over CFE), but my CFE base footprint is around 256MB just to open.  I can't recall whether I changed the defaults at any stage, but the JVM settings for me set a 256MB Perm, and a min heap size of 512MB (max 1024MB), and a 512MB stack.  That's a fair chunk of memory allocated to it.

JVM settings would be the default I imagine.

Don't imagine... check 😉

Would reinstalling really fix it?

I dunno.  But given it could and given it's a 10min job, why not?

It is unclear to me whether your posting here was intended to solicit help trying to fix this, or just to register your irritation about it.  Both are completely legitimate reasons to post, in my view., so I don't mean that in a bad way, but if it's just the latter then well I'll stop scratching my head and just go "yeah.  Bad luck there", and go back to my beer.

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Adam

[Adam Cameron.]

This has been a persistent problem with CFBuilder since the start and since it's not been fixed so I assume it's not at the top of Adobe's todo list.

Oh... forgot to say. This is a bit of a specious comment because clearly it's a problem for you, but is equally clearly not a problem for everyone using a Mac.  Otherwise I'm sure we'd've heard about it more.  And Adobe would have dealt with it.

That's not to take away from what you're experience, but this will probably be a quirk of your setup or even your code that CFB is having problems with.  It's not going to be an inate problem with CFB.

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Adam

[AvantSG]

Here's the thing. This is not isolated to just my mac. It happens on my  windows box at work too.  Not just mine but the other developers in the  office as well. I have a couple of friends in TX and NV who have the  same issue. One dropped back to using DW.

How can we all be having similar problems? I wouldn't have asked in this forum if it had just been my mac... but I'm seeing it in a few places. That's why I assumed it might be more than my environment.

To be honest, I suspect it is Eclipse.

[Adam Cameron.]

I see.  Have you put the patch on that came out a few weeks after the 1.0 release?

I had signifcant problems with slow-downs and the like with the pre-releases and the initial release, but the patch seemed to sort a lot of it out.  But then my trial expired and I went back to CFE, and the problems went away.  This was running on various flavours of Windows.

I didn't think 1.0 was usable - actually my opinion is that it was not release-ready, to be frank - but the 1.0.1 (or whatever it was) was quite an improvement.

CFE does slow down occasionally too, but it's so infrequent I don't really mind.  It - Eclipse - is a bit of a hungry monster of an app though, I will say that.

Oh, another question to ask is whether you have any other plug-ins installed within your CFB install too.

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Adam

[Ram Kulkarni]

Checkout these two blog posts -

http://blogs.adobe.com/cfbuilder/2009/10/issues_on_mac_-_some_tips.html

http://blogs.adobe.com/cfbuilder/2009/11/cfb_performance_on_mac_-_how_i.html

-Ram

[AvantSG]

Thank you Ram,

Those links make total sense. I know FF is memory intensive as well. I'll give the suggestions a go.

Thank you much

[AvantSG]

I have found something very interesting. If I run Photoshop CS5 or Illustrator CS5 or any other Adobe product ALONG WITH CFBuilder, my memory consumption goes through the roof. Things slow way down and start to die.

As soon as I close CFBuilder, everything speeds right back up.

IF I open CFBuilder first and then say Photoshop, everything slows way down super fast.

IF I open Photoshop first and then CFBuilder, things operate ok for a while but then go down hill in speed.

I have 4 GB of memory installed with 4 more GB on the way cause I have to get things done and this is killing my productivity.

So... that being said, I have turned off FF Preview in CFBuilder and I will HOPE that more memory will keep me afloat for a while longer.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Adam Cameron.]

I have found something very interesting. If I run Photoshop CS5 or Illustrator CS5 or any other Adobe product ALONG WITH CFBuilder, my memory consumption goes through the roof. Things slow way down and start to die.

In that you specifically single out Adobe products, do you mean that this does not happen if you try a similar experiment with the second app being a non-Adobe product?

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Adam