| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| malarial |
Posted - Feb 17 2012 : 4:25:41 PM
Hello,
Whenever I open a Visual C++ solution, Visual Assist X says that it is "sorting" in the Visual Studio status bar: "VA X: Sorting...". It continues to say this for hours and hours. During this time, my hard disk usage is exorbitantly high: between 5 and 10 MB/s, all writing to the Visual Assist X databases for a particular project (see attached screenshot of disk usage reported by resmon).
Because of this high hard disk usage, I Visual Studio hangs and for extended periods of time (a few minutes to half an hour) whenever I try to do anything. For example, scrolling an open source file will cause it to hang.
Furthermore, this high hard disk usage results in my whole computer becoming less responsive. Running any application takes a very long time.
Eventually, if I leave the computer alone for hours, the "VA X: Sorting..." message will go away, and the computer will be usable again.- Is it expected to see the "VA X: Sorting..." message every time I open a VC++ solution?
- Why is it taking so long, and can I somehow reduce the amount of time it takes?
- Is there a way to restrict the amount of hard disk bandwidth Visual Assist uses so that I can keep it at a manageable level?
Here is some version information. Please let me know if you need other information.- Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate (10.0.40219.1 SP1)
- Visual Assist X 10.6.1862.0 built 2011.12.13
Thanks! |
| 12 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| feline |
Posted - Jul 02 2012 : 3:55:03 PM
Thank you for the update, hopefully this will keep on improving, or at the very least, not get any worse. We take performance seriously, and try to keep VA running as fast and as smoothly as possible. |
| malarial |
Posted - Jul 02 2012 : 3:31:18 PM
To loop back here, I have been keeping Visual Assist X updated, and I have noticed that the issue has subsided in one of the recent releases.
I am now running
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Version 10.0.40219.1 SP1Rel. Visual Assist X Version 10.7.1908.0 built 2012.05.31.
I'll post back here if I can reproduce the problem again.
Thanks for your help. |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 29 2012 : 6:34:01 PM
To be honest I am not exactly sure what the sorting status bar message means, but I suspect it is related to sorting VA's symbol database, since we need to be running regular lookup's in the database, so having some form of sort or index is important.
Since the .vcproj files are not checked in we can be sure the sync is not causing problems with these. That is a little unexpected, but certainly limits the things we need to think about and check.
Turning off "Parse all files when opening a project" will mean VA is less aware of new symbols that have been added to the solution by the sync. VA won't find out about the symbols until the file that contains them is opened and thus parsed. So this will have an effect, but hopefully not cause to many problems.
Can you please try the following
* perform a sync
* load VS2010 but do Not load your solution
* turn On VA Logging:
VA Options -> Performance -> Enable logging
* load your solution, and wait for the "VA X: Sorting..." problem to start.
* leave VA sorting for 5 to 10 minutes, so long enough to hopefully give a good sense of why VA is caught in this loop
* close the IDE, this will also stop logging, and make sure it is turned off next time you load the IDE.
Please see this FAQ for details of turning on VA's logging, and sending us the log files
http://docs.wholetomato.com?W305
Hopefully the log files will give a clue, and it would still be useful to know if turning off "Parse all files when opening a project" fixes this, if you have the time to test this. |
| malarial |
Posted - Feb 28 2012 : 6:47:32 PM
I don't think I can reasonably see all files that have changed since my last sync, since we have thousands of files in our code base. However, we do not store any .vcproj or .sln files in source control. The .vcproj and .sln files I use have been created in Visual Studio by using "File -> New -> Project From Existing Code...". I store those files in a directory under "My Documents\\Visual Studio 2010", which is separate from where the synced source code resides.
I have not changed VA to store the symbol database in a custom location. I double-checked my registry to confirm this is the case, as specified in the article you provided me.
The location of the symbol databases is separate from where the synced source code resides. In fact, on one of my machines exhibiting this behavior, the source code is on an entirely different drive.
I'll try turning off "Parse all files when opening a project", but won't this reduce the functionality of Visual Assist? If it doesn't parse all files when I open the project after syncing new code, then doesn't that mean the symbol database will be out of date?
Also, do you know what the "VA X: Sorting..." message means? The reason I ask is to determine whether there is something unique about my workflow that triggers the situation where "sorting" is necessary. I don't think there's anything extraordinary about my workflow, but maybe knowing what the message means will spur some thoughts.
To give you an idea of how I reproduce this issue, here are the steps I take from installation of VA.
1. Install Visual Assist X.
2. Create a project from existing code, select two directories of existing code, synced from source control.
3. VA X successfully parses the code, and everything works fine.
4. Close Visual Studio 2010.
5. Sync and build overnight.
6. Open Visual Studio 2010.
7. Open the Visual Studio .sln file created the day prior.
8. The "VA X: Sorting..." message appears and the computer becomes highly unusable.
Thanks |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 28 2012 : 6:00:42 PM
Are you able to easily check which files have been changed since your last sync?
Specifically, have any of the .vcproj or .sln files been changed? Or just code files?
It almost sounds like the sync is corrupting VA's symbol database, thus triggering this problem. Can you please check and see if your machine is set to store your VA symbol database in a custom location, as explained here:
http://docs.wholetomato.com?W332
If you look at the directories the source control system is set to update, do they overlap with where VA's symbol database lives? Since you have disabled the anti-virus this should not be causing any problems.
Can you try turning Off:
VA Options -> Performance -> Parse all files when opening a project
and see what effect this has? I would have expected turning it on to help, but perhaps this is making it worse. |
| malarial |
Posted - Feb 28 2012 : 4:51:30 PM
Hello,
I typically re-sync with the IDE closed.
The "Parse all files when opening a project" option is already enabled.
By the way, the last time I received the "VA X: Sorting..." message, it took well over an hour, at which point I decided it would be best to rebuild the symbol database instead of waiting longer. So it seems that the amount of time it takes can very quite a bit.
What does the "VA X: Sorting..." message mean? |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 28 2012 : 4:24:14 PM
Do you re-sync the source code with the IDE open or closed?
Can you try turning On:
VA Options -> Performance -> Parse all files when opening a project
and see if this makes any difference? If this is currently Off then it will probably slow down the initial solution load, but hopefully it will be a lot faster than this sorting problem, and VA should have no need to reparse your stable include directories, which should help make this faster than a full symbol database rebuild. |
| malarial |
Posted - Feb 24 2012 : 7:43:52 PM
Hi,
I run only one instance of VS2010 at a time. (I've accidentally opened a second one before, but very rarely, so I don't think there's been any issues from that.)
I just tried re-opening VS2010 and reloading the solution without re-syncing with source control, and it looks like there was almost no sorting. I still saw the "VA X: Sorting..." message for about 30 seconds, but it went away. VS2010 also seemed more responsive after the message goes away. So this could have something to do with it. It will probably take a few more tries to ensure that this wasn't just a coincidence, I guess.
My VA stable include directories don't overlap with where my solution and source files live. (My VA include directories are the default directories set up when VA was installed.)
For anti-virus, we run System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection, but I've turned that off and also the Microsoft Antimalware Service. With those off, the problem still occurs.
Thanks again. |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 17 2012 : 10:36:40 PM
I have just tried loading a larger C++ solution, 25,153 files listed in OFIW. There was a lot of VA parsing messages, but virtually no sign of any VA sorting messages on the IDE status bar.
Do you run more than one instance of VS2010? Or just the one instance?
Since the problem does not happen the first time you load the IDE after doing a symbol database rebuild, I am wondering if something might be triggering this problem. Can you try closing and then reloading VS2010 without performing a re-sync with source control please?
It would be good to know if this re-sync is a factor or not.
Do your VA stable include directories overlap with the directories where your solution lives?
What anti-virus software are you using? Very occasionally I have seen problems where anti-virus scanning of VA's symbol database can cause performance problems, so this is a possible factor. |
| malarial |
Posted - Feb 17 2012 : 6:59:09 PM
Hi feline,
If I rebuild the symbol database using VA Options -> Performance -> Rebuild symbol databases, then I do see VA X Parsing messages as it parses files in the solution. Once the parsing is done, Visual Studio is generally very usable. (During parsing, things can get laggy at times, but it's typically alright.)
However, if I load the solution again later on (like a day later), then I see the "VA X: Sorting..." issue described above. Another thing I can think of that is related is that I sometimes re-sync the source files in the solution overnight
The "Open File in Solution" dialog indicates that I have 16472 files in the solution, which is probably accurate. (The code base is actually larger than that, but I excluded many of the other projects from this solution to reduce its size.) |
| feline |
Posted - Feb 17 2012 : 6:01:51 PM
This is definitely not expected.
First, can you try pressing the button:
VA Options -> Performance -> Rebuild symbol databases
and restart your IDE.
I have just done this with VS2010 and VA 1862 here, and I did not notice the "VA X: Sorting" message at all, all I noticed on the status bar was a parsing message. Do you get much of the parsing message?
How many files do you have in your solution?
If you open VA's Open File in Solution dialog (Alt-Shift-O) the title bar contains two numbers. The first number is the number of files currently listed, which changes as you filter the list. The second number is the total number of files in the list, which is normally the number of files in your solution. What is this second number? |
| malarial |
Posted - Feb 17 2012 : 4:48:41 PM
Correction: I don't always have to leave my computer alone for hours. I just tried it again, and it took about 1 hour before the "VA X: Sorting..." message went away. |
|
|
