IDE Compilation speed; seems very slow

I have installed Arduino 1.0 on my new windows computer (Dell vostro with lots of memory). I used to run on my 4-year old Dell mini 9 (also windows).
Compiling (Verifying) even the smallest example Blinky program takes about 2 minutes on both machines. Is this reasonable?

I have copied the whole unzipped Arduino folder to my desktop and made a shortcut to run the .exe from there.

Any ideas about improving the speed will be welcome; although it's not the end of the world (it does seem to work), it seems really slow.

Thanks!

[sorry this is so long]

Hi Sue, I am another noobee to Arduino, although I've been programming for years. I've been running
both IDE 0022 and 1.0 on my two WinXP machines, and have been having tons of problems with
various issues. I also notice that practically everyone [meaning 1000s of others] have problems
getting things sorted out too.

Currently, the IDEs run fine on my netbook, but keep hanging up my larger notebook - this last comes
and goes, and I don't know why. When this happens I also have slow compiles and slow startup and
shutdown on the IDE s.w., and then the machine will not even turn off properly. It hangs up and gives
an error that the Arduino IDE has not finished running, even though I exited it, and it does not
show up in the Task Manager. So, exiting never quite shuts down the IDE. What ??????????????????

Personally, I think there is a fundamental problem with IDE 1.0 that has not been fixed, so I avoid
using the one machine.

That being said, there are some things to try.

  1. when you plugged in the Arduino board the first time, which should have been with the IDE
    NOT running, did you get driver installation instructions?

  2. did you select the proper board and serial port in the IDE Tools menu? NOTE - it might take
    some doing to figure out which COMPORT the board is actually connected to, depending
    on what all is installed on your machine.

  3. also I find that many times compilation and uploading will hang, and I have to keep pressing
    "Verify" or "Upload" to get it to complete. [I really think there is a fundamental problem with the IDE, as noted].

  4. if item 1 or 2 don't fix it, you might try changing to "verbose" compile mode, and this will
    maybe display some useful error message. You have go to "File > Preferences" and edit
    preferences.txt to say "build.verbose=true". NOTE - you have to exit the IDE before saving
    the edited file, or the IDE will overwrite it.

BTW, one thing I found after doing all this is, on the machine that hangs, the error message
says "cannot delete core.a", when the compiler hangs.

When I look in the proper directory [c:~documents......\build771899352394394.tmp], I indeed find
file core.a left in there [usually .tmp directory files are erased] and cannot delete it. For some
reason its attribute is set to DON'T DELETE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, or somesuch.
Truly bizarre.

I have to reboot the machine and then go back to the temp directory, and then I can delete
core.a. Duh!

Hint, hint [for the IDE developers :(].

Try turning off any bluetooth stuff that is running - that seems to help a lot of the time.

Many thanks oric_dan, I suspect that the smallest compile is "compiling the world" and that the IDE is an old, old app at heart...like I said, not the end of the world, just strange. I was just "verifying" the code, without having an arduino connected (yet) hoping that it would run faster on my new machine. If anything it's slower, which is hilarious.

I too have seen the occasional barfs that can be overcome by closing the program and starting again. Kind of takes me back to the dawn of computing...edit, compile, go for coffee...

Thanks CrossRoads. Worth trying although it didn't seem to help. This is a new machine without much cruft, so I was hoping for better results. I will configure it properly to talk to the arduino and try again.

All in all, it's a lot of fun, though!

@Sue,
just for the heck of it, why don't you try IDE 0022 and see how that goes.

Just an idea, are there know issues with particular versions of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) ?

I don't know of any Java issues. I seem to have 6.1.160.1 installed on my Win Vista machine.

OK, the trouble was (I guess) between then keyboard and the chair!

Now I have installed the Arduino driver (and the port is set in the IDE) the compile takes only a few seconds. I withdraw the remark about the IDE being old and cranky and make another one about pathological connection to the target hardware...lol

Many thanks for replies.

Now I have installed the Arduino driver (and the port is set in the IDE) the compile takes only a few seconds. I withdraw the remark about the IDE being old and cranky and make another one about pathological connection to the target hardware...lol

Good to hear. At least, it all gave me a chance to voice some of my own "gripes". LOL.
I'm sure they will just figure my problems are operator error, but I don't see how the
following could be my fault - computer hangs on closing the IDE:

BTW, one thing I found after doing all this is, on the machine that hangs, the error message
says "cannot delete core.a", when the compiler hangs.

When I look in the proper directory [c:~documents......\build771899352394394.tmp], I indeed find
file core.a left in there [usually .tmp directory files are erased] and cannot delete it. For some
reason its attribute is set to DON'T DELETE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, or somesuch.
Truly bizarre.

I need to wait minutes for the machine to finally figure out how to close down the Arduino app,
but then on reboot, I at least can go in and manually delete "core.a".

What is "cruft"?

-jim lee

I had the same problem - compile time was very slow with the Arduino 1.0 IDE and an Arduino Uno r3 (over a minute to compile the blink sketch) on a Windows 7 64-bit machine (with plenty of resources). I was running Arduino IDE off of a network drive. I tried running the IDE off of a local drive, instead of a network drive, and the compile time improved dramatically, to only a few seconds.