Performance is very slow

[StevenForehand]

While editing some large files and even a few shorter ones, I've noticed performance is poor.  I can type but it is usually 4-5 letter behind what I am typing.  This mostly occurs with larger files but is occurring with a file I am currently working on that is 61 lines long.  HELP!

[Charlie Arehart]

Steven, there can be a few different possible explanations. One thing I've found handy to try to isolate the cause is to open the Progress view (window>show view>other>general>progress). It displays status messages of actions currently underway in the workbench (CFBuilder). Sometimes you may see a delay because some task is running in the background (like a synchronization process or building of a project).

But I realize you may say, "no, this happens when there's nothing else that should be going on". Fair enough.

I've seen it slow down (while typing) when it reports that it's trying to "Collecting <servername> Server Settings" from the server(s) you've defined in the servers tab.

I've also seen (when it slows down while typing) that this progress view shows things like "refreshing content", "processing errors" and "building workspace". I'd like to better understand those, myself. Maybe someone on the team can give us more information on what each means and whether we can do anything to mitigate their effect on the slowness we may see.

/charlie

[Ram Kulkarni]

Performance of CFB could be little slow when editing a large file, because the default configuration of CFB tries to provide code assist after typing number of characters (space, new line, '.', '>', '/' etc. ). We are currently working on preferences options that would make CFB performance better.

However we have observed that the default settings of CFB are good for editing smalle/medium size files. If you are saying that performance is not good even on smal files, then understanding your configuration might help us to debug the problem e.g. type of CFB installation (stand alone/plugin), any other (than CFB) plugins installed, OS etc. And as Charlie mentioned, CFB is little slow when it is getting server information (after server is added or when CFB is started). Performance is also slow when you are linking a folder in a project that has large number of files.

You can try following options and see if CFB performance is better - 1. In preferences turn off 'Automatically Display Code Assist When Typing' and 'Automatically Insert Closing Tag'. Note that you can still invoke code assist manually by typing key conbination assifned for code assist (which is CTRL+SPACE on Windows). 2. Try chaning settings in .ini file as mentioned in Adam's blog at http://www.adrocknaphobia.com/post.cfm/update-your-coldfusion-builder-beta-settings-for-flash-builder-4-beta

[Charlie Arehart]

Thanks, Ram. Since this is going to be an issue for some, I'd like to get a little elaboration on your thoughts.

When you say, "Performance is also slow when you are linking a folder in a project that has large number of files", would that not also be true if the project location itself (rather than a linked folder) had a large number of files? Some may go the linked folder route, while others may point their project location at such a directory. It seems useful to be clear if your observation applies to both.

Also, is it about the number of files in the root of that location? Or all files, including directories?

And might any impact of that be specific to certain editing operations? Or do you mean even just typing text?

I'll just throw in, too, that I have a large file (2700+ lines, mostly HTML, for my cf411.com page of tools and resources) which when I edit in CFB is quite slow. Turning off code assist does indeed help. (Sorry I didn't think to mention that idea in my last note. I did know it, but was focused more on mentioning the progress view, which was an interesting discovery.)

I'll note as well that this very large file happens also to be in a project with a large number of files and directories, but that doesn't seem to affect it too negatively. It does seem it was mostly code assist that caused the delay (though I was focusing just on typing text, not using any code assist or features to test).

(And in case anyone would ask, I had made the ini file changes to give CFB more memory. That didn't make much of a change, but I'm not for now using any other plugins, and CFB's memory use isn't generally high.)

Just offering these as more thoughts for people to consider, now and in the future as they find this thread.

/charlie

[Ram Kulkarni]

Charlie, you are right, if you are creating a project in a folder that is very large then immediately after creating the project, CFB might appear slow because it is gathering information from files and folders in the project. However once this process is done, size of the project should not affect the performance.

[StevenForehand]

I changed the settings you recommended but am still experiencing very slow performance will large files and some  smaller/medium files.  My setup is as follows:

OS: Apple OS X 10.5.7

Computer: Mac Pro 2x2.8Ghz, 6GB DDR2 RAM

IDE: CF Builder standalone

Additional plugins: Teamprise TFS

Server used: Local CF 9 installation

I observed the "progress" as well as the "console" tab and do not see any during the "slow" activity.  With large CFM and CSS files, the IDE is almost unusable.  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Steven

[Ram Kulkarni]

Steven, few other users have also reported slow performance on Mac (compared to Windows). The problem is that in our testing on Mac with large files we did not see much performance difference compared to on Windows. But we will investigate this further. We will also check CFB performance with Teamprise plugin.

[Daniel_Harvey]

I have been using cf builder for about 2 weeks now.  I am new to the cf environment so I do use the code hints for direction sometimes but don't need them most the time.

I have been going back through an enterprise application to secure all of the queries by using cfqueryparams.  A lot of times when I go to close the cfqueryparam tag with a '>' the builder will hang/freeze for awhile, anywhere from 30 sec - 4 min.  When the builder comes unhung it will then show the '>'.  During this time the progress window shows 'Refresh Content(Sleeping)' or just 'No operations to display at this time'.  The files I am working with range from small to large and I have not noticed a performance difference between the two yet.

I am going to take a stab at what might be causing the problems without looking into the code of how it works.  I feel it has to do with the way the builder checks for errors in your cf code and that without that '>' there a lot of the rest of the document is shown as errors.  I feel this is the problem also as when using quotes or tick marks and deleting one so there isn't a current one to close it at the time will also show similar results and have a performance decrease just not as bad.

Another note is as this problem seems to get progressively worse the more days I use the builder.  I do restart every night when I go home so nothing should carry over from day to day.

Specs

OS: Windows XP Service Pack3

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6750 2.66GHz

Memory" 3.5 gb

ColdFusion Builder Standalone

Version: 1.0.0
Build: 240773

[Guest]

Things were rolling along pretty well for me, as I decided to finally take a step away from Dreamweaver and towards CF Builder. Then, I opened up a very large css file, and my whole experience went to hell. I'm running a 64-bit machine with 16gb of RAM and the thing takes 5-7 seconds to respond to each mouse click or keystroke in the document. Then the whole program just locks up and gets extremely laggy. Not sure if a certain line in that document is to blame.

I really was getting excited about moving to this IDE too. Guess I'll move back over to DW so I can get some work done. Hope these performance issues get worked out soon.

[chopper phil]

I concur. Beta 2 is much slower then Beta 1. And the longer you leave builder open the slower it becomes. It behaves like it has a memory leak or is consuming 100% of the cpu.

But checking the Activity Monitor on my 64 bit Mac does not indicate a problem (about 2 gigs of free ram and only 5% of processor used).

Running it on my 64 bit Vista PC is all but impossible  (about 2 gigs of free ram and only 5% of processor used).

I really like the feature set of CFBuilder, but unless the performance issue is fixed it might as well be vaporware.

Been waiting since 2001 for a new CF IDE, guess for now I'll continue using Coda on my Mac and HomeSite on my PC.