Why does my application installer take hours to build?

[rkmadse]

My application is pretty large, but it doesn't seem like it should be taking several hours to generate the installer for target machines. Can anyone help me cut that time down or help me not go insane. I am running into trouble with the instruments not communicating on the target machine once installed and that is causing problems that I'd like to troubleshoot reinstall and keep cycling that process, but with a 4 hour build time that is difficult...

Thanks,

Kellen

[crossrulz]

My initial thought is you are way too many drivers going into your installer.  My second thought is you do not have the installers "cached" on your machine and you are getting the distributions from disks or a slow network location.

But these are complete shots in the dark since you really gave us no details to go by.

[rkmadse]

If my project were being built out of a network folder (I store it there for safe keeping) would that cause slowing in the build process? I appreciate your help, you may have answered my question.

[crossrulz · Accepted solution]

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@rkmadse wrote:

If my project were being built out of a network folder (I store it there for safe keeping) would that cause slowing in the build process? I appreciate your help, you may have answered my question.

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It would depend on the speed of your network, but that is a possibility.

Sort of off topic here.  Instead of storing your project on a network folder, you should be using a SCC (Software Code Control) software like Tortoise SVN.  The repository you store on the network.  This would allow you to work on your project local to your computer and commit changes.  And if you really mess something up, you can perform a simple revert to go back to your last commit.  This really comes in handy when working with a team since then you can perform an update to get all of the changes other people committed as well.

[rkmadse]

Wow I feel like an idiot... I moved my project locally, and it probably took less than a minute to build... Thanks for jogging my memory.

-- Kellen