About 18-fold increase of the Mass Compile time with the latest update of the LabVIEW (2023 Q3 23.3.1f1)

[D_mitriy]

About three weeks ago, I received an update for the 2023 Q3, which upgraded the original version to 23.3.f1. Interestingly, I have been unable to find any references to this version on the NI website or through Google searches.

Nonetheless, everything appears to function well in this version with the exception of one minor, yet significant issue.
The compilation time (for the Mass Compile only) has increased 18-fold, now taking nearly 5 hours instead of approximately 15 minutes.

All factors I can think about remain identical, including:

• the PC and its hardware,
• NI drivers versions,
• project,
• VIPM packages set,
• compiler optimization settings,
• there were also no major Windows or other 3rd party software updates,
• even the building times for the Application (EXE) remained the same.

But Mass Compile time increased by 18 times, which is astonishing and unacceptable.

Waiting for 15 minutes to continue working is one thing, but being forced to run the build overnight is entirely another.

Does anyone have any ideas or hints?

Sincerely, Dmytro.

[TiTou]

I would suggest you try jki fast mass compile tool

https://lavag.org/files/file/3-jki-fast-mass-compile-tool/

I've used it in the past and it was significantly faster than the integrated mass compile tool

For the rest I'm still using LV 2020...

[Kyle97330]

I am not on 2023 so just a guess here...

Are you using the default "Cache VIs" setting of having it on and set to 10 VIs?

Did you check to see if the speed improved at all if you increase the "Cache VIs" count to something a lot higher, like 100 or 1000?

I would also wonder if maybe the bug found in this thread might have affected the ability to multithread the mass compile, behind the scenes.

[Darren]

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@Kyle97330 wrote:

I would also wonder if maybe the bug found in this thread might have affected the ability to multithread the mass compile, behind the scenes.

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I'm reasonably confident the issue in that thread is not related to any mass compile issues.

I have not observed a mass compile slowdown in LV 2023 Q3 Patch 1 compared to previous releases. OP, can you provide some code (hopefully pared down from your full project) that clearly exhibits a slower mass compile in one version of LabVIEW compared to another?

[D_mitriy]

Unfortunately, I can't share the code. And other projects I have around are too small to notice any difference, as they all are ampiled within a minute maybe.

@Kyle97330 : I tested the idea about using a large VI cahce values (200 instead of 10) - unfortunately, no visible difference (I've stopped calculation early, after ~1 hour). But you right that the compilation works only on a single core of the processor.

Currently I am testing an strange idea whether the "UseUnicode=TRUE" parameter has something to do with the issue, as it is only one of the very few things changed recently.

P.S. I will try to come up with some test code anyway. Just the smaller the project - the harder to spot the difference.

P.P.S. @TiTou : I will check this tool, thank you.

[D_mitriy · Accepted solution]

Solved. The problem is probably caused by the LabVIEW bug I reported a long time ago (LabVIEW fails to clear the compiled object cache).

I've recorded a screen video of the compilation process and observed that the numbers of functions compiled/saved for each file (as shown in the blue frame in the image below) are extremely high (in the red frame), for whatever reason. E.g. Instead of the typical range of 1-15, I frequently observed counts in the hundreds. Furthermore, the "Search" field consistently searched for a "missing" files (in reality there are none).

So, I navigated to C:\Users\My-User-Name\Documents\LabVIEW Data\VIObjCache\23.0.0r0\ and manually deleted the objFileDB.vidb file.

The Mass Compile of the entire project then completed in 12 minutes and 10 seconds, as expected. This was a significant improvement compared to the previous attempt, being 23 times faster.