Xcode Server (Sierra) 5.2 -- slow integrations

Question

Created Sep ’16

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I upgraded our CI server to Sierra with macOS Server 5.2. Xcode Server is configured to use Xcode 8.0 for builds. Previously, we were on El Cap, using Xcode 7.3.1. Previously, builds took about 20-25 minutes to run through. After the upgrade, build times are more like 3-3.5 hours. So we're seeing an almost 10x increase in integration time. We've got some scripts that run during the CI build, but they print out timings and run in a few minutes, as expected. There are no other changes (same hardware, same code base), except that the code was migrated from Swift 2.2 to 2.3 (so minimal changes there). Xcode 8 on the desktop builds normally.

Has something been added to the Xcode Server 5.2 build process that would account for such lengthy build times? I let the server upgrade the bots. Looking through the settings, it seems the same except now it's creating a user-installable product with "Universal App with thinned variants". Does the app thinning require a lot of extra processing?

Interested in hearing if anyone has had a similiar experience.

Thanks,

jay

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Answer 1

talkboxapp OP

Oct ’16

Same here(xcode 8 + server 5.2 (EL Cap)), it took around an hour to build a single target and when you see the progress, it is compliing files at a very low speed.

My project is hybrid project with obj-c and swift 3.

I checked the CI server stats, it has process called "node" grabbing to much memory. And seems like it is running different CI jobs in concurrent way. Let me dig deeper and reply asap.

p.s. I have let server to upgrade bot setting as well. "Universal App with thinned variants" is checked.

best,

Michael

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Answer 2

ckhpdx OP

Nov ’16

Same issue, old builds took about 30-35 minutes new builds between 1:45 and 2:15. Looking at the logs our source code fetch, build, and test are taking about the same amount of time (about 20 minutes). The build then spends the next 1:30 signing bits for the archive process. Nothing on our side changed, seems almost a moment in time rather than our code or even the xcode server bits.

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Answer 3

marksvend OP

Dec ’16

We are plagued by this exact problem. Our builds went from 30 minutes to almost 3 hours on Xcode Server, while building locally in Xcode the total time has not changed. We've had a bug open with Apple, who has been corresponding with me to try to diagnose the problem.

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Answer 4

marksvend OP

Dec ’16

I found a solution that drops our build to 41 minutes. It seems there is a new option after installing Xcode 8.2 called "Create user-installable product" in the Build Configuration section. It's set to build a "universal app with thinned variants" by default, which means it has to sign all the libraries for every variant. I just turned this off since we only need the archive, but switching it to "Universal app only" should also greatly improve build times.

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Answer 5

ckhpdx OP

Dec ’16

Thank-you!!! I changed to the "Universal app only" settings and our builds went from nearly 2 hrs (avg 1hr57min) to 42mins, cut by 2/3. Still have an ipa for the QA folks to download. One strange thing our script to detect the successful creation of the ipa (looking in the XCS_OUTPUT_DIR) fails now, had to look for it in the web assets directory.

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