Flare 10 SVN performance

[ashtontreadway]

I just upgraded from 9 to 10, and I'm seeing a drastic degradation in SVN performance. On an existing project, I'm seeing at least a doubling in the time Flare takes to get latest version all, update the pending check-ins list, and perform SVN actions.

Has anyone else trialed Flare 10 with SVN, and seen similar issues? We don't want to start rabbit-holing on troubleshooting this if it's a known issue with 10 and SVN.

[pouliotmax]

I'll try this today or tomorrow

[Nita Beck]

I was a beta tester of Flare 10 and didn't see any big issues with its SVN integration.

That said, I have two observations this morning using the released Flare 10:

-- Importing a fresh working copy from SVN seems much faster than it did in Flare 9.
-- But routine check outs, check ins, even refreshing the Pending Check-ins list seem noticeably and annoyingly slower than in Flare 9.
-- I think there is also some bugginess going on (which I just reported), and maybe it's the cause of the slowness. I opened an SVN-bound Flare 10 project on my secondary monitor and then moved it to my primary monitor. Now, every time Flare 10 interacts with SVN, there appears a "ghost" window on the secondary monitor. Flare 10 seems to be having issues refreshing the layout. (I haven't tested whether this "ghost" window appears when I'm working in a non-bound project.)

[pouliotmax]

No issues here

[sdcinvan]

Really wish I could help.

I'm still awaiting jira support.

Sorry, I hijacked this thread.

[aevansb]

My team of seven is experiencing extremely slow performance after upgrading to Flare 10. Check-ins, check-outs, and refreshing Pending Check-ins rarely work on a mass operation basis. We now have to check in or out topics one by one. Very painful.

[Nita Beck]

My team of seven is experiencing extremely slow performance after upgrading to Flare 10. Check-ins, check-outs, and refreshing Pending Check-ins rarely work on a mass operation basis. We now have to check in or out topics one by one. Very painful.

Please report this to MadCap, if you haven't already. I opened a support ticket about this last week, but bringing more requests to bear can only help us all.

[aevansb]

My team of seven is experiencing extremely slow performance after upgrading to Flare 10. Check-ins, check-outs, and refreshing Pending Check-ins rarely work on a mass operation basis. We now have to check in or out topics one by one. Very painful.

Please report this to MadCap, if you haven't already. I opened a support ticket about this last week, but bringing more requests to bear can only help us all.

Thanks, Nita. I just called Support and they were very understanding. They pointed me to the note in their system requirements for Flare 10 about how they recommend a hard drive speed of 7200 rpm or above for optimum performance and reduced compile times.

http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/#Flare/Ins ... ements.htm

All our machines actually have 7200 rpm, and we're still experiencing the issue, so I'm not quite sure what the problem is.

[RamonS]

I don't think the speed of the local hard drive has anything to do with SVN performance unless you run the source control system locally. Check in/out also has nothing to do with compile times. Not sure if support truly understood what the problem is.

[pouliotmax]

After doing some more testing, it seems SVN is indeed slower in Flare 10 than in Flare 9...

[RmdHill_Writer]

We are having serious issues with SVN and Flare 10.01. We can check files out, but are having issues checking them back in. We get a Commit Failure error message and then have to manually break the lock through the SVN Repository Browser. This happens daily but inconsistently.

Daily check-outs, check-ins, refreshing the Pending Check-ins viewer are significantly slower. Additionally, navigating the Content and Project Viewers is painfully slow.

Our SVN server is version 1.6 and our Tortoise client is 1.8.5. Madcap Support has indicated that we must have Tortoise version 1.8.5, but that Flare V10 is compatible with Subversion 1.5.3, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8.

We have synchronized the local copy with the repository a number of times, have re-imported the project from SVN a number of times and deleted various local directories many times (\Analyzer, \Output, \Project\Users, and \.svn).

We are in contact with Madcap Support daily, but don’t seem to making any progress, this has been on-going since we upgraded on March 3.

[aevansb]

How frustrating. We've also contacted MadCap several times, and finally they recommended we revert to Flare 9. We haven't quite pulled that trigger yet, but we're close!

[ChoccieMuffin]

We use SVN, but not from within Flare.

Just as a suggestion, would your processes fall apart if you break the link to SVN in Flare and do your checkins, checkouts and updates from Windows Explorer rather than from within Flare? This means it's a manual task rather than automatic but would probably mean you could continue to use Flare 10.

[RmdHill_Writer]

That's an interesting idea. We'll give it some thought.
We'll likely rollback as none of us are that attached to Flare 10.01 as yet.

[servobot]

SVN performance just got worse after upgrading to Flare 10.1, despite being listed as an improvement in the installer notes.

Checking out any file in a small SVN bound project now takes about 30 seconds. After the checkout, we get the black screen of waiting (BSOW), and not responding messages for another 30 seconds.

In large projects, we're waiting minutes to interact with files.

[dberman]

Experiencing the same issue as well. Checking out and checking in takes for ever. Using SVN 1.7 and Flare 10.1.

[Nita Beck]

I am not -- and I am -- seeing the Flare + SVN performance issue in V10.1.

When working onsite at a client's and trying to hit an SVN server that is installed on a network drive, I am not seeing performance issues. Individual files are checked out or checked in within seconds, as I would expect. For what it's worth, the protocol is https.

When trying to hit an SVN server that I installed directly on my hard drive (for purposes of demonstration last week at MadWorld; using https protocol), I am not seeing performance issues.

When trying to hit an SVN server that a friend of mine is hosting at his company (so I consider it "in the cloud"; using the ssh+svn protocol), V10.1 grinds to a halt and in fact becomes unstable. Yesterday, an attempt to check out a single file (by right-clicking it in the Content Explorer and selecting Source Control > Check Out) caused Flare to go into an endless loop of repeatedly trying to check the file out (even after it already had) and Flare was unable to repaint the Content Explorer at all. This is in a project with -- count 'em -- three topics in it. I eventually had to use Task Manager to kill Flare. Very unhappy... So for the time being, I will work in V 10.1 ('cause I want to use the new features) but purposefully only while disconnected from the SVN server. That way, I can at least work. Then, later in the day, I'll reconnect and will have Flare check in all the changes and adds, even if I have to walk away for a while...

I've reported the above as a bug, and I encourage anyone still having issues with Flare 10.1 + Subversion also to report it.

[Centauri27]

I am running SVN with Flare 10.1 and I haven't noticed much slowdown with SVN itself, but then I haven't done any mass check out/in yet (my 27 topic check-in just now went fine). But my biggest gripe is the overall slowness of Flare 10! Everything is running a bit slower and creakier: just scrolling through my list of topics in the Content Explorer is herky jerky and frustrating (and even the trick of turning off the condition indicator didn't improve things). And when I let a topic float, trying to move it around the screen is a sticky and laggy experience: it's like I've gone back in time 20 years to my 286... Especially when we have tablets and cell phones with silky-smooth screen refreshes.

As MadCap piles more features onto Flare, it gets more and more sluggish: Flare 10 is slower than Flare 9, which was noticeably slower than Flare 8, which was not as speedy as Flare 7... It's just so aggravating. The slow topic scroll is definitely linked to the Flare integration with SVN, because when I load an archive project that's not linked to SVN, the scrolling is zippy.

Consider me a less and less enthusiastic Flare customer.

[stealth94rt]

We are in a holding pattern at Flare 9.x until the SVN issues are resolved. I couldn't stand the thought of subjecting the other members of my team to the long check-in/out times, black screen, etc. I was excited when the 10.1 patch was released, but that quickly turned to disappointment when I found the SVN issues were still there.

IMO - If Madcap is going to continue to be successful, they need to test on servers "in the office", "in the cloud" and "accessed via VPN", so they can get the bugs worked out before release versus having the customers finding them. The 10.0 and 10.1 releases have lowered my confidence in the product (in other words, what else is hiding in there that we haven't found?).

[Centauri27]

Correction to my previous post: it turns out that my performance woes are indeed tied to SVN. As a test, I loaded an old archived project that was no longer version controlled and the performance perked right up! The scrolling was zippy and no screen refresh issues. I then went back to my current SVN-controlled project and Flare instantly felt like it was walking through quicksand. (Like my netbook trying to run Word while a virus scan occurs in the background.)

I agree with @stealth94rt that MadCap should do a better job of performance testing their new releases. What good is a bunch of spiffy new features when the overall product user experience tanks?

Carl