CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++visual-studiovisual-studio-2017incredibuild
prom85
prom85

Reputation: 17818

IncrediBuild increases linking time significantly

I have a project and made a clean build 3 times with VS and IncrediBuild

Setup of IncrediBuild: 2 machines are compiling at once, both have around of the same performance

  1. VS compiler

    • Compile Time: ~10min
    • Linking: ~3-4min

  2. IncrediBuild

    • Compile Time: ~4-5min (=> as expected, approx. half time)
    • Linking: ~10min (=> unexpected, should be approx. the same time)

This is reproduceable over a few builds (I made 3 clean builds). I know, IncrediBuild can't parallelise the linking of one project, but why is linking slower with IncrediBuild compared to VS linking?

My tests show me, that I don't have any benefit using IncrediBuild and I was thinking of using a few machines to build my project to increase build speed, but if linking is that slow (and so much slower), even using 10 machines would not be a benefit for me and would not be worth the money because linking time is destroying any benefit I get from improved compile time.

I'm working in a big company and buying CPU power is cheap and no problem, but IncrediBuild costs money as well and currently it would not be worth it. Any ideas what I could try or what I could be doing wrong? I've just installed IncrediBuild and use it with default settings.

Setup

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1641

Answers (1)

Dori
Dori

Reputation: 460

You shouldn't expect this difference in link time when using IncrediBuild.

I would recommend trying the following:

  1. Make sure you are using the Visual Studio 2017 /Debug:FASTLINK option.

  2. If the above didn't help, see if restricting the number of PDB files IncrediBuild uses can help. Right click the IncrediBuild tray icon-> Agent Settings -> Visual Studio Builds -> Advanced, and set the "Limit concurrent PDB file instances" to 12 or below.

  3. Try to temporarily disable any anti-virus software you have installed on your machine.

If these tips don't help, we'd highly appreciate if you could contact us at [email protected] so we can understand what's wrong in your environment and post a solution for the community.

Disclaimer, the write works at IncrediBuild.

Upvotes: 1

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