Skip to main content

Profiling your Swift compilation times

The new iOS application that I’m working on – written 100% in Swift – was noticeably taking much longer to compile than should, given its size (~200 files). More concerning, it was suddenly a lot slower than only a couple of weeks prior. I needed to get to the root of the problem as soon as possible, before it got any worse.

Identify methods with slow compilation time and take action!

Add -Xfrontend -debug-time-function-bodies to my Swift compiler flags

Using the xcodebuild command line tool results in the logs being printed to standard output, where we can message them to our liking:
xcodebuild -workspace App.xcworkspace -scheme App clean build | grep [1-9].[0-9]ms | sort -nr > culprits.txt

You may also want to sort the result by the amount of times methods gets compiled:

awk -F '\t' '{print $2}' < culprits.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr > culprits_count.txt

Best list compilation was to sort by the multiplication the time a method needs to get compiled with the numbers a method gets compiled.

I actually had 1,200+ cases in which a function took more than a second, with many taking over three seconds. Rewriting just these three lines of code caused my entire project to build 60% faster.

irace

Comments

Most Favorite Posts

Dark Theme (Dark Mode) in Android WebViews, WKWebViews and CSS

So your apps just implemented a shiny new dark theme and it’s looking šŸ‘Œ There are lots of benefits to having a dark theme in your application, and having it consistent throughout your application allows for a great user experience. But what happens when the the user runs into a WebView in your app? Support: if (WebViewFeature.isFeatureSupported(WebViewFeature.FORCE_DARK)) { ... } Set: WebSettingsCompat.setForceDark(webView.settings, WebSettingsCompat.FORCE_DARK_ON) Current setting: val forceDarkMode = WebSettingsCompat.getForceDark(webView.settings) Joe Birch Assuming your question is asking how to change the colors of the HTML content you are displaying in a WKWebView based on whether light or dark mode is in effect, there is nothing you do in your app's code. All changes need to be in the CSS being used by your HTML content. CSS dark mode via :root variables, explicit colors and @media query: :root {     color-scheme: light dark;      ...

Server-driven UI (SDUI): Meet Zalandos AppCraft and AirBnB Lona

A short WTF: Joe Birch:  SERVER DRIVEN UI, PART 1: THE CONCEPT Zalando seems to follow the SDUI principle as well - defining a common design language and construct the screens on the backend while displaying them natively on the clients. They even go one step further; they implemented a mighty toolset to enable non-technical stakeholders to define their own native app screens Compass: Web tooling to create screens and bind data Beetroot: Backend service that combines the screen layout definition with the data Lapis/Golem: iOS/Android UI render engines Crazy cool! Good job, guys (when you do an open-source release?) To even move faster a Flutter based UI render engine implementation was great! See also AirBnB Lona SDUI approach Building a Visual Language Why Dropbox sunsetted its universal C++ mobile project and AirBnB its React Native implementation

UIDeviceOrientation vs. UIInterfaceOrientation

We stumbled upon a bug in one of our apps: - rotate the Homescreen to Landscape - go to some other screen - put the device on the table and go back - the homescreen is all messed up This behavior was similar with some other View controllers. The problem was in the viewDidAppear where the Interface should be rotated to Layout or Portrait- the UIDevice Orientation was used ( [UIDevice currentDevice].orientation ) an when you put the device on the Table the orientation of the Device is always "UIDeviceOrientationFaceUp". The Problem is that the Device Orientation could be FaceUp in Portrait AND Landscape mode so for this use-case this doesn't give you the proper information. instead determining the orientation by: UIDeviceOrientationIsLandscape([UIDevice currentDevice].orientation) you should do this (at least in View controllers) and use the interfaceOrientation property: UIInterfaceOrientationIsLandscape(self.interfaceOrientation)

Alpha Apps vs. App Unbundling

Aktuell wird viel Ć¼ber das Modell der "Alpha Apps" und "App Unbundling" gesprochen. Hier kurz eine Ɯbersicht und meine 5 cents: Alpha Apps Die chinesische App WeChat geht noch weiter: Neben einem Messenger, vergleichbar mit WhatsApp, bietet sie einen Lieferdienst Ć  la Lieferando, die Mƶglichkeit etwa das eigene Konto zu checken (wie sonst bei der Bank-App) und gleichzeitig die Chance etwa Promis zu folgen, wie es Twitter bietet. Solche Alpha-Apps kƶnnen dadurch verschiedene Aspekte und Mƶglichkeiten des Internets verbinden und werden so zum idealen Zugangsportal zum Netz – so wie traditionell der Browser am Computer. Den Tod des Browsers bedeutet das aber noch lange nicht. Der Browser ist tot, es lebe der Browser! Wirtschafts Woche App Unbundling Unbundling steht fĆ¼r das Unterteilen von Apps oder verschiedener Funktionen in mehrere, eigenstƤndige Applikationen. Aber nicht jede Unbundling Aktion wird positiv von Usern aufgenommen. Facebook Messenger ...

Unidirectional Data Flow Architecture (Redux) in Swift

In this post, I try to explain why using Redux with Swift is better idea [than MVVM]. What is Redux and Unidirectional Data Flow? Redux is a flux implementation but slightly better implementation, it makes your application’s state more predictable. It first came out in Javascript world as a predictable state container for JavaScript apps with the powerful javascript library React. Redux, simply makes your application’s state in single store object. So firing an action from your application/in view’s lifecycle state changes and your reducers for that action generate a new state. Seyhun AkyĆ¼rek at Medium Replacing Redux in Swift with something better Being a fantastic framework for development doesn’t come without a cost. Every time you update internal state in Redux, the entire interface re-renders. This isn’t a huge deal in most cases. But eventually you might have a situation where one update to state needs to be instantaneous (like using the keyboard shortcut to move f...

I show you mine if you show me yours first - Our current Android and iOS Stack

Something from our internal  WeltN24  native apps lab: We just setup a new app from scratch, which puts us in the nice position of incoroporating the latest frameworks an pattern. We go for a Reactive and MVP approach. Please find below some details. I would be happy to hear about your choices - please leave a comment! Android iOS OS Android 4.1 (4.0.3+) API Level 16 iOS 8 Language Kotlin 1.0, with fallback to Java where necessary Swift 2.1.1 Pattern Reactive & MVP Reactive and MVVM Libs AndroidRx Dagger 2 Retrofit 2 Dbflow Glide Crashlytics JW-Player Gson Interstellar Dependency Injection (custom) JW-Player Alamofire JW Player realm.io Carlos BrightFutures ObjectMapper (custom) Testing JUnit Mockito / PowerMock & Hamcr...