Unity assembly definition files slower, not faster - how to compile faster?

Slight necro, but this is not that crazy. Enabling debugging in the editor has a *very* heavy performance cost. Most of the time it does not matter, especially considering it's ridiculously useful, but the slowdown is not surprising.

 

@AlkisFortuneFish perhaps I wasn't too clear: the setting slows down even if you never ever use the "Attach Debugger" feature. It slows down the editor just to have the possibility of attaching the debugger.

 

Yes, that is precisely what I mean too. There was a post about this at some point in the past year or so, enabling "Editor Attaching" incurs a heavy performance cost, whether you are debugging or not.

 

Great but to me that's not really obvious, leaving a socket open for something to communicate with it shouldn't have any noticeable slowdown. Maybe that's just me

 

It's a bit worse than that, unfortunately!
The code generator inserts a ton of extra checks to handle debugging, whether you are attached or not, so *all* managed code, as well as loading and reloading it, is slower. I cannot find the original post, but it is mentioned in a blog post by @Aras when he was benchmarking his raytracing code.

 

This is very interesting, but for me the time between pressing save in the IDE (rider in my case), the scripts compile and the editor reloads is more of a time sink than entering play mode.

is this also related to domain and scene reload and will it be possible to disable that, or is it only on enter playmode?

thanks for working hard on this, looking forward to test when 2019.3 comes out stable.

 

OP is unhappy about 5-7 seconds to enter play mode, so I thought I would time my own editor in 2019.3 using HDRP and a relatively powerful gaming computer.

Including letting the compilation happen and hitting play, from when I hit 'save' in my IDE to when I can interact with my scene, is 33 seconds. Sometimes its only 18-25 seconds if I didn't modify any c# files.

If my project is 3k LOC with very few assets now, does that mean it will take 3 minutes 6 months from now? What do you do to avoid it if the assembly definitions don't speed it up?

Profiler says its moslty split between 'ReloadAssembly' and 'LoadScenes' and 'UpdateScene'

 

Haven't tested it yet, but in 2019.3 you can disable domain reload to enter play mode faster. Go ahead and try that, but beware the caveats on static fields and events:
https://docs.unity3d.com/2019.3/Documentation/Manual/DomainReloading.html

 

I'm using a handful of static fields and events unfortunately so I've shyed away. Also, 99% of the time I press play its after a script change. I think this feature is just for when there were no script changes? I could be wrong about that

 

I just tried it, and it's amazing. By using the shortcut CMD-P or CTRL-P it seems to go even faster. Not sure why, but I love it I guess, don't use static, but not sure how to replace them

 

You can use static, just initialize them, like so :

Code (CSharp):

1. public class MyMonoBehavior : MonoBehavior
2. {
3.     static int myStaticCounter;
4.     static Action myAction;
5.  
6. #if UNITY_EDITOR
7.     [InitializeOnEnterPlayMode]
8.     static void InitializeOnEnterPlayMode ()
9.     {
10.         myStaticCounter = 0;
11.         myAction = null;
12.     }
13. #endif
14. }

 

You stop using Unity.

 

You don't need to use Editor stuff,

[RuntimeInitializeOnLoadMethod(RuntimeInitializeLoadType.SubsystemRegistration)]

wiill work too

 

This is an awful reply, brings absolutely nothing to the conversation.

 

Thanks for the information.

 

Nope, the code I'm giving is to re-initialize static variables when you enter play mode, while you have disabled domain reload under the Editor (to enter play mode faster).

 

Yeah but this callback fires later than the SubsystemRegistration one from what I recall, so SubsystemRegistration is still the best place for it, and is not an editor API.

Edit: seems like it is not the case anymore (or never was), InitializeOnEnterPlayMode does trigger before SubsystemRegistration. (Unity 2021.3.6)