Background caching

[tobias.jordan]

Hi Sergey,

first thanks for this really great tool! I ever missed the "Open type" function from Eclipse ...

I would like to ask for an enhancement for the solution browser (maybe for all browsers). We have a big solution with about 1200 files. Everytime I use the solution browser for the first time after VS-start it takes about 2 min. for caching. Is it possible to run the caching in the background as low priority task? That would save me a lot of time ...

Thanks and regards,

Tobias

[Sergey]

Yeah, assuming you're talking about v2.8.x, it's Solution Browser only issue. See my latest blog post on that. The short version is that I am aware of this issue and will be addressing it for version 2.8.4. The patch won't make it into soon to be released 2.8.3 though. Thanks for bringing it up.

[joshnorton]

Hi Sergey,

Is it possible to cache this across solution loads too, so that re-caching is not required every time I reopen the solution? Maybe an extra file in the solution directory (solutionName.sln.dpack?)...

Regards,

Josh.

[Sergey]

Hi Josh,

Yep, that's exactly how I plan on addressing that request. Initial caching will also be moved back onto the main thread to speed the whole process up.

Thanks.

[joshnorton]

Cool, sorry, from the blog post/this post I was under the assumption that you'd addressed a hand-on-startup issue long ago by moving it onto a background thread, not that you planned on storing the cache data.

Cool, great!

Thanks for the addon, it's awesome.

[Sergey]

Right, I didn't mention it in that blog post. I do however plan on addressing those 2 issues together, i.e. Solutoin Browser caching performance and cache persistence.

Yeah, I did address the original caching performance issue by moving it onto a secondary thread. That introduced an unfortunate side effect though. That secondary thread has to process code model "served" by the main (VS UI) thread. Most of VS code model is accessible as COM objects. So, there is a lot of marshaling going on back and force. That had slows caching process down by factor of 2 or 3. So, I may have to move it back onto the main thread, which of course will resurrect the original (startup) problem. Thus, I will have to add persistent storage option to combat that.

Sorry for a long reply.

[Sergey]

Hi guys, Tobias and Josh,

Just wanted to let you know that I've just posted a new beta, which addresses both of the issues I mentioned earlier: Solution Browser caching performance and cache persistence.

Keep in mind, while this beta release is of RC quality, it's still a beta. Please take a look at the change log and readme if you decide to give it a shot. And it goes w/o saying, please report any issues you find.

Thanks.

http://www.usysware.com/files/DPackSetup2008Beta.exe (VS 2008 - 806Kb)
http://www.usysware.com/files/DPackSetup2005Beta.exe (VS 2005 - 811Kb)

[joshnorton]

Hi Sergey,

Thats awesome, you notice the improvement in performance straight away!

Thank you very much. By the way, the link for the VS2008 version is missing, you doubled the VS2005 one, but a little bit of URL analysis and intelligence got me the right file. :)

How long does the beta last? 3 months?

Once again, thanks. This product is awesome, it's nowhere near as invasive as Resharper and still has all/only the tools I need/want.

Josh.


[quote="Sergey"]Hi guys, Tobias and Josh,

Just wanted to let you know that I've just posted a new beta, which addresses both of the issues I mentioned earlier: Solution Browser caching performance and cache persistence.

Keep in mind, while this beta release is of RC quality, it's still a beta. Please take a look at the change log and readme if you decide to give it a shot. And it goes w/o saying, please report any issues you find.

Thanks.

http://www.usysware.com/files/DPackSetup2005Beta.exe (VS 2008 - 806Kb)
http://www.usysware.com/files/DPackSetup2005Beta.exe (VS 2005 - 811Kb)[/quote]

[Sergey]

Link's fixed. Sorry about that.

I'm with you on ReSharper. We do have a legit license at work. I really liked older version 2.x but once we've upgraded to 3.x and then 4.x, it's just slowed VS down considerably. v.4.5 has been released recently, which supposed to improve the performance dramatically but I'm just hesitant to try it out.

[Sergey]

Forgot to add this. DPack betas tend to be short lived to encourage frequent refreshes and more rapid testing cycles. You can open Help|About and look up DPack's entry in order to find out beta expiration date.

This current beta is set to expire at the end of this month. With the next beta I'll push the expiration date to early June, which is when I expect for this version to go GA.

[joshnorton]

Hi Sergey,

Thanks so much for this add-on. It makes my coding experience so much more enjoyable, and I can do so much more in my day.

Regards,

Josh.