IDE and compilation speed

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hi all, I have been using the arduino ide for programming an ESP32. over use the loading of the IDE has got slower and slower, it now takes about 6 minutes just to load the IDE.
Also the compilation of programs now take on average 7 to 8 minutes, Obviously I am loading more and more "stuff" into the Arduino libraries etc causing my problem. So the question is where and what do I look for in order to speed things back up. Thanks

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Hi @dave_ansell. I remember a report from @StefanL38 about a problem that sounds similar to yours:

Try this:

  1. Select File > Preferences from the Arduino IDE menus.
  2. Click the link on the line following "More preferences can be edited directly in the file".
    This will open the Arduino15 (or similar name depending on OS) folder in your file browser.
  3. Select File > Quit from the Arduino IDE windows.
  4. Switch back to the file browser window that has the Arduino15 folder open.
  5. Open the file named preferences.txt in a text editor.
  6. If you scroll through the contents of the file, you should see a line that starts with recent.sketches=. Check whether that contains a huge number of paths.
  7. If it does, then delete that line from the file.
  8. Save the file.
  9. Start the Arduino IDE again to see whether the problem has gone away.

If you did not find that there were tons of paths on the recent.sketches=, then my guess was wrong and the performance issues you are experiencing have another cause. Let us know and we'll see if we can find it.

If the preferences.txt file has grown so huge that your text editor has trouble opening it, you can delete it instead. The Arduino IDE will automatically generate a fresh the next time you start it. However, this file contains the preferences you set in the Arduino IDE File > Preferences dialog. They will all be reset to their default values. So if you have any custom preferences settings (e.g., "Additional Boards Manager URLs"), you would need to set those preferences once again after you start the IDE the next time. That is not too difficult, but you might want to first record all your preferences settings.

Note that you must always close the Arduino IDE before editing or deleting the preferences.txt file. If you don't, your changes will be reverted by the Arduino IDE when you close it the next time (it stores the preferences in memory and writes them on exit).

3

Thanks, I will give it a try

4

Hi Stefan,
I certainly had loads of paths in the recent .sketches path so I deleted them as you suggested, unfortunately it did not improve anything with either the starting of the IDE or loading sketches to my ESP32.
If you have any other ideas I would be grateful to hear them, if not then thanks for trying. cheers Dave

5

An antivirus program can sometimes significantly slow down the IDE, you may want to temporarily disable your antivirus and see if that affects the IDE.

1 Like
6

Thanks David, I have tried that and it helps, unfortunately its not the cure.
I may have to uninstall and try a clean start but I am hoping that will be a last resort.

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