Performance Issues

Hello Stephan,

S> I decided to take Demetra for a spin yesterday to see some of the new
S> features. It looked nice and all, but it was significantly slower
S> than my version 5.1.2 that I normally use. So slow that I almost
S> just went back to my 5.1.2 just to avoid the slowness. Are there
S> plans to enhance the performance before the 6.0 release?

We're fixing performance issues all the time, but without any details (like,
what exactly operations were slower for you), we cannot tell whether the
specific problems you've encountered will be fixed.

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Software Developer
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

I must admit that I'm noticing significant pauses with virtually every operation, but only every so often. Short of running the CPU profiler continuously, I'm not sure what to report. I must admit the other reason I haven't been reporting slow downs is because the EAP versions have always been slower.

General things which I have noticed:
- Opening a project for the first time after boot up can take up to 2.5 minutes. Subsequent openings take ~30 seconds. This differs from 5.1.2 in that after a boot up it can take a minute, and then subsequently will take ~45 seconds. The project has about 1,500 classes and 50 JSPs.
- Opening a dialog which hasn't been opened before in the session can sometimes take up to 15 seconds to appear. This is sporadic.
- Right-clicking on a file/class to bring up the context menu can sometimes take up to 20 seconds to appear. This is quite sporadic, but happens a bit too much for comfort.

The sporadic pauses don't appear to be due to garbage collection (at least the bottom right indicator shows plenty of free memory).

I'm not on a low spec machine (2GHz dual core, 2GB of RAM) and 5.1.2 is as smooth as butter.

One thing I've noticed that is somewhat annoying is that
if I type at full speed then the '.' after an object does not
activate the auto-completion feature. For example, if I type
very quickly the following:

System.out.pr

and then pause, waiting for the option to auto-complete "println",
it will never happen. I have to backspace and then retype the '.'
to get it to work. If I type slowly, then it works.

To reproduce this type "System.ou", then quickly type "t.p".
Autocompletion doesn't activate.

Depending on the speed of the computer, and other activity on
it, this problem can render auto-completion almost unusable. It
really breaks up the flow of typing. The problem is worse if you
are using a bunch of classes, and you type the name of a class
that hasn't been used in your source file yet.

Nathaniel Colangelo wrote on 20.7.2006 2:05:

One thing I've noticed that is somewhat annoying is that
if I type at full speed then the '.' after an object does not
activate the auto-completion feature.

Have you adjusted the autopopup delays at Settings > Editor (latest EAP
has them under Settings > Code Completion)? I usually keep them all at 0
ms or around 100-300 ms (slightly longer than typing at full speed). The
default value of 1000 ms is a bit too high.

(I haven't used the EAP versions for real work, so I don't know whether
they have problems with that.)

--
Esko Luontola
www.orfjackal.net

I confirm. The auto complete and the garbage collection are the other sources of huge pauses.

I've created a JIRA issue for the poor project opening times (http://www.jetbrains.net/jira/browse/IDEA-8320).

In the process of creating those I also noticed the huge difference in IDEA startup times - IDEA 5.1.2 starts in 6 seconds, whereas IDEA 6 starts in 28 seconds! Is there anyway to create a CPU profile from startup? Looking at the task manager, IDEA 6 appears to be carrying out a lot of I/O at startup (with I/O read bytes at 946MB) compared with IDEA 5 (34MB). I'm guessing this may contribute to the slow-down! These timings are start-up times without opening any project.

I have uploaded a snapshot of poor performance of 5383 just in general editing. Name of file is:

5383_Gary Evesson_19.07.2006_17.02.29.zip

Huge pauses (10-30 seconds) when right-clicking on fil tab. Creating a new class. Editing the new class.

Sorry, wrong snapshot. Name should be:

5383_Gary Evesson_20.07.2006_14.47.25.zip

Looks like things are getting bogged down in java.io.File.getCanonicalPath().

Before anyone asks, this is not a network drive.