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Pawprint
New Member
5 Posts |
 Posted - Mar 19 2008 : 09:28:05 AM
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| I've given VA X a try and I've found its Intellisense performance to be abysmal. Instead of the sub-second response I get from the VS IDE alone, it can take upwards of 2 seconds for the VA list to appear. In fact, Intellisense was not my major interest in the product, rather it was the outlining ability and drag-and-drop code rearrangement (I'm a...stickler, shall we say...when it comes to keeping my functions alphabetized). However, no matter how many check boxes I uncheck, I can't seem to turn off VA Intellisense completely without disabling VA altogether, which of course also disables outlining. Is there a way, or is this product simply not for me? |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Mar 19 2008 : 11:17:36 AM
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Which IDE and version of VA are you using?
Which programming language are you working in?
If you are working in C++ then does turning ON:
VA Options -> Advanced -> Listboxes -> Get content from default Intellisense
help?
I am not sure why you are seeing this performance problem, normally I would expect VA intellisense to be faster than the IDE's, not slower. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Pawprint
New Member
5 Posts |
Posted - Mar 19 2008 : 11:32:53 AM
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Sorry, should have provided more details. I'm using VS 2005, VA X 1626 and writing in C#. As an example, let's say I start typing the name of a function, DrawSelectionBorders() in this case. After a few keystrokes letters finally start appearing in the editor as if they were coming out of a 300 baud modem. It conceptually happens like this:
d r a w s e <Intellisense list finally appears>
With VA X disabled I type "d" and poof! the Intellisense list pops right up.
And I already tried the check box you mentioned above; no joy.
For me, nothing is more aggravating than having to wait for the editor to catch up to me. All the macros and shortcuts in the world can't make up for sluggishness, so no matter how many cool features VA X may have (and they ARE cool), if it slows down my editor it's not going to last long on my machine. If there's a registry setting or something to disable Intellisense, great, it can stay. If not, I'll move on. Thanks for the reply. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Mar 19 2008 : 11:55:38 AM
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That is not supposed to happen.
Can you run a CPU monitor, and see what is happening? Is your CPU usage jumping to 100% as you try to type? Or 100% on a single core if you have multiple processors.
How large is the file you are working in? 20 lines? 200,000 lines?
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? |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Pawprint
New Member
5 Posts |
Posted - Mar 19 2008 : 3:48:31 PM
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Okay, the number of files in my solution is 55. I turned the following options back ON: Shrink when possible, Include suggestions in listboxes, and Include VA Snippets in listboxes. Then I began typing the name of a function (CancelActivity) in the current document. In Task Manager, CPU usage shot up to 100% until the list displayed, and I had the same delay I described in my last post. I then turned off the three options mentioned above and typed the same function name (specifically, the first 4 letters). CPU usage jumped up to about 75%. Reaction time was slightly faster...but the list was positioned on CheckBox instead of CancelActivity! I noticed the same thing happen earlier today when I typed "const".
If you have any more suggestions I'm happy to try them. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Mar 20 2008 : 11:35:33 AM
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55 is a very small number of files, so the solution size should not be a problem.
Do you see the same problem in a new, default C# windows form project? I am wondering if this problem is somehow project specific.
I suspect there is an interaction problem between VA and something else on your system. Do you have any other IDE plugin's installed?
Can you try disabling your anti-virus and see if this makes any difference? We have had occasional reports of anti-virus programs causing problems for VA.
Can you please go to:
VA Options -> System Info -> Copy Info
and paste the details (from the clipboard) into this thread. This will give us the basic information about your setup. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Pawprint
New Member
5 Posts |
Posted - Mar 20 2008 : 2:30:09 PM
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=====================================================
VA_X.dll file version 10.4.1626.1 built 2008.01.17
DevEnv.exe version 8.0.50727.762
msenv.dll version 8.0.50727.762
Font: Lucida Console 16(Pixels)
Comctl32.dll version 6.0.2900.2982
Windows XP 5.1 Build 2600 Service Pack 2
Single processor
Platform: Win32
Stable Includes:
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\include;
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\atlmfc\\include;
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\PlatformSDK\\include;
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\include;
Other Includes:
Stable Source Directories:
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\atlmfc\\src\\mfc;
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\atlmfc\\src\\mfcm;
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\atlmfc\\src\\atl;
R:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\crt\\src;
=============================================================
I created a default Windows Forms application and I see better performance, but still definitely not faster than Visual Studio's own Intellisense. However, I tried typing "const" and the list was properly filtered to that word, both in the new project and in my existing solution, so a restart must have fixed that little piece of weirdness. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Mar 20 2008 : 8:18:41 PM
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The only odd thing here is the drive letter R:
Is this a local drive or some form of network drive?
When you are typing and seeing this slow down, is the solution and the file on a local drive or some form of network or removable drive?
Are you using subst to map drive letters to directories?
I am looking for anything "odd" that might explain the problem you are seeing.
To put things into perspective I ran Process Explorer:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
on a winXP SP2 test machine with VS2005 and VA 1626.1
I turned on the "CPU history" column in process explorer so I could see what was going on with the IDE. The screen shot shows what I am seeing after adding a new class with a couple of functions to a C# file in an existing project:
There are spikes in there, but most of them are below 50%. As you would expect typing was fine for me, no speed problems, and very eager listboxes all over the place. This is running inside VMWare, which if anything should make performance worse, not better.
Can you try running Process Explorer please, and see what sort of IDE CPU history you get?
One thing to try, can you press the button:
VA Options -> Performance -> Rebuild symbol databases
then restart the IDE and give VA a couple of minutes to rebuild its symbol database. Your symbol database should be fine, but if this fixes the problem then that tells us that a corrupt symbol database was causing the problem. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Pawprint
New Member
5 Posts |
Posted - Mar 21 2008 : 6:34:08 PM
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That's an interesting feature of Process Explorer. I didn't know it had that. I'll try to do this at the beginning of next week.
And I'm just a partitioning freak. My hard drives are split into lots of logical drives. |
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Mike ONeill
Tomato Guru
South Africa
103 Posts |
Posted - Mar 27 2008 : 08:44:34 AM
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This is reminiscent of my late problems on my rather aging lap top, associated with too many addins and not enough RAM. I had a "Competitor" refactoring product installed and used to regularly see 2 sec + delays in typing even . Uninstall and voila back to normal , I now try to minimize my number of addins to VA plus Red Gate SQL prompt.
I saw this in VS 2005 and again more recently in Vs 2008.
The symbol rebuild seems to be a more frequent requirment in 2008 as I see it but I have only had in installed for a week so I will reserve judgement.
I suppose the answer is evaluate addins by all means , pick the best ( Visual Asist X by a long chalk -- I find it hard to code without it now) and bin the rest.
Hope it helps
Mike |
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Mike ONeill
Tomato Guru
South Africa
103 Posts |
Posted - Mar 27 2008 : 08:48:46 AM
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| PS I also not that VS is a memory hungry and I suspect a bit leaky too. If I get problems like this I always find a re boot helps. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Mar 27 2008 : 10:11:48 AM
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There are no known memory leaks in VA, so I am not sure where this memory usage is coming from.
There is a known problem with a corrupt VA symbol database. When this happens the memory usage can hit 2gig, so the problem is rather hard to miss. Normally though you should never see a corrupt VA symbol database.
If you have:
VA Options -> Performance -> Keep symbols in memory for fast response after Alt+Tab
turned on this will increase the memory used, but I would not expect it to cause problems. Mike how large is your solution, and what sort of memory usage are you seeing?
VS2005 on my test machine is currently using 114meg of memory. This is with a solution containing 670 files in 6 projects, using C++, C# and VB. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Mike ONeill
Tomato Guru
South Africa
103 Posts |
Posted - Mar 28 2008 : 07:12:37 AM
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My project is probably 40 classes , avg 50 lines , I have 1 Gb installed , with VS 2005 running I show 400 Free .
This is a office lap top with all the Network , antivirus stuff installed and lots of background services . On my stand alone home PC I have 2 Gb and never see a problem . That is almost a Visual Studio only machine .
When I was having problems with the other Refactor program , it dropped to as low as 60M , with the same set of apps running . I have a SQL Server instance , plus I usually have Outlook , SSMS open along with VS. the one PC is not ideal but ...
At times I just had to re boot to free up memory
I also had problems where VAX and Refactor we competing I suspect, reverting to just Vax cleared the problem.
I don't really see any differnce between vs 2005 and 2008
Mike |
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Mike ONeill
Tomato Guru
South Africa
103 Posts |
Posted - Mar 28 2008 : 07:19:30 AM
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PS on the same line , I recently tried AutoCode from the VS Gallery site , it too seems to also compete , I even lost the caret.
Back to the KISS principal , find what you like to work with and don't PLAY , in te long term its counter productive !! |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Mar 28 2008 : 12:35:31 PM
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| As you say, this does sound like some form of conflict between VA and some other plugin. Hopefully the memory usage problems have gone away now you are just using VA. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Can I disable VA Intellisense completely?
