DerivedData
Both Xcode and AppCode intensively cache temporary “information” on the file system. Each time you cleanup the project, make a new build, or launch the app in iOS Simulator, IDE will read and write megabytes of files into the special folder named DerivedData. You will be surprized how much space can be freed up by executing rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/* in Terminal. This command is totally safe, because Xcode will regenerate everything it needs from scratch when you build the next project.
- IRamDisk on osx View iramdiskosx.txt. Usually use Android studio for a period of time, Mac will be stuck, other software is no problem, visual inspection is the problem of Android studio. Solution, iRamdisk, how to use iRamdisk, see this article or google it yourself. I have allocated 2.5G of memory for Android tudio (8G total).
- IRamDisk is a nice application that spares you having to use hdutil to create a RAM disk. It features as shareware (also known as payware) and has the regular time-bomb mechanism that makes the application expire after some time.
- Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6GHz, Radeon RX 570 MSI Armor 4GB, 16GB.
As result of this caching, the speed of building and launching the app in debugger may significantly depend on the “speed” of your hard drive. With SSD, a typical iOS-project with precompiled information will launch in 5-10 seconds. With HDD, it will take more time. Anyway, you should know that there is an easy way to build and launch the app in iOS Simulator much faster.
Free Solution
Download the latest version of iRamDisk for Mac free. IRamDisk uses a part of your RAM to create a new volume shown as an ordinary drive that can be mounted and used independently in your Finder. The only disadvantage to RAM disks was that the data stored in them was lost every time you turned your Mac off, or the power went out. You had to remember to copy the content of the RAM disk to your main storage system or your work would be lost.
I found this solution in the Krzysztof Zabłocki’s talk about iOS Developer Tools. The last paragraph of the article (it is not mentioned in the video) is about the command line tool named RamDisk:
This script will let you create ramdisk for iOS sim, derived data a few other important folders. This can make your development wayyy faster.
In other words, OS X allows you to create a super-fast file storage directly in RAM and hard-link it into the file system in place of the DerivedData folder used by Xcode. You can even create multiple “virtual” drives and mount them to Application Support/iPhone Simulator and Application Support/Caches/appCode2.0
There is a great blog post explaining this in more details, and some are worth quotation:
Mounting a volume on top of your existing DerivedData hides the old files. They continue to take up space, but are unreachable until you unmount the RAM disk.
The contents of the RAM disk disappear when you reboot or eject it from the Finder. Xcode will need to rebuild its indexes and all of your project’s intermediate files the next time you create one.
One more thing: such RAM disks are not “allocated” in the memory, they take only as much space as needed to keep all files.
Update → AppCode does not recommend moving the whole Caches/appCode20 folder on a RAM disk, because among everything it stores indices and local history's data. Once the in-memory storage is reset, no local history will be available. However:
DerivedData can be safely moved to a ram disk; though for big projects the full rebuild may cost more than the saved time.
Paid Solution
Unfortunately, the original Gist does not support commands stop and start, so you will have to restart OS X in order to remove RAM disks. It is not very convenient to support them between launches and you can forget to reclaim the RAM after you finish the coding session.
Fortunately, “there is an app for that”. iRamDisk will create and manage RAM disks for you. There is a standard setup for Xcode development, and you can easily mount the caches folder used by AppCode too. Here is my setup:
Update → iRamDisk menu bar icon stands out of the croud, so I made a replacement. Put these images in /Applications/iRamDisk.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/iRamDisk-Helper.app/Contents/Resources and toggle the preference Show in menu bar to update.
Does it work?
Iramdisk Mac 使い方
YES.
I tried this on my MacBook Pro with Retina Display 8 GB and iOS Simulator launch time reduced to the matter of seconds. There is also a conversation in Twitter that you may find interesting.
It seems like the iOS Simulator launch time does not change significantly for AppCode, but I find it fascinating that SSD is not touched during massive cache readings and writings.
P.S. I assume the same recipe would work with Photoshop or Illustrator.
What is RAMDisk?
RAMDisk is a program that takes a portion of your system memory and uses it as a disk drive. The more RAM your computer has, the larger the RAMDisk you can create.
What is the benefit?
In a word: SPEED! The performance of a RAMDisk, in general, is orders of magnitude faster than other forms of storage media, such as an SSD (up to 100X) and hard drive (up to 200X).
You can download RAMDisk for free!
Most users use RAMDisk to speed up applications like:
- Games
- Browser cache for faster web surfing
- Audio and Video editing
- CAD programs
- Software compilers
- Databases
- Speeding up CD duplication
- SETI processing
- TEMP files
- Swap space
- Web server cache
- Security - all information can be wiped upon power loss or shutdown
- Custom applications with high I/O, high bandwidth, or high security requirements
An additional feature of a RAMDisk is that it will never wear out. You can access it at maximum bandwidth 24/7/365 without fear of mechanical failure, or fragmentation (while a RAMDisk can become fragmented just like any other disk, but it does not take a performance hit like a physical disk does when it becomes fragmented). A RAMDisk operating at maximum bandwidth does not produce excessive heat, noise or vibrations. RAMDisk can also out-perform solid state disks (SSDs).
YouTube video: Set up a RAMDisk and Make Your Computer 415% Faster!!
RAMDisk Extreme unlocks the freeware and enables features such as Background Update. This option greatly reduces time to shut down RAMDisk by keeping the RAMDisk backed up continuously. This is also great for data protection as the RAMDisk *.img file is as up to date as possible at any given time. Get yours today!For personal use only.
Iramdisk
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An affiliate (referral) program is a terrific way to earn some extra cash online. If you have a website, blog, social media, etc. then you can quickly and easily begin earning money. As a Dataram affiliate you can earn 20% on sales of RAMDisk (Personal and Commercial versions) and you'll get paid monthly. Becoming an affiliate with Dataram is super easy, FREE, and only takes a few minutes to set up.
RAMDisk Lite is perfect if you don't have a lot of RAM in your PC or laptop. Get all the same features and functions found in the Extreme version and create RAMDisk drives up to 12 GB. Option to upgrade to 64 GB in the future. For personal use only.
Iramdisk
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RAMDisk is offered as 'freeware' for personal use and will allow you to create disks up to 1 GB in size. Some features not enabled and require the purchase of a license key to be enabled. For personal use only.'100% CLEAN award granted by Softpedia'
V4_4_0_RC36
Hardware Requirements: Any Intel or AMD-based x86 system with at least 2 GB RAM (at least 4 GB recommended).
O/S Requirements: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, Windows Server. Sorry, no support for Linux or Mac.
RAMDisk will be limited to approximately 2.85 GB maximum with 32-bit Windows OS.
RAMDisk Support Center
We've got more tutorials and the answers to your most common questions about RAMDisk to quickly get you on your way. If you can't find an answer to your question, our Support Team is ready to help.
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