web
You’re offline. This is a read only version of the page.
close
Skip to main content

Notifications

Announcements

No record found.

Community site session details

Community site session details

Session Id :
Finance | Project Operations, Human Resources, ...
Unanswered

Performance of the D365FO Developer environment, will it ever get better?

(1) ShareShare
ReportReport
Posted on by 4,075

So another work week has gone by, and as always I find my selv wondering, is this 1991 or 2021??

Now the reason I am wondering this is that when I started my formal developer education, the school I attended was just facing out their old mainframes.
And I remember everyone being ecstatic about that, and the reason I was told that on those machines compilation of your code was something that was being done during the lunchbreak, so you where writing code before lunch, compiling during lunch and bug finding after lunch.
How old fashioned, so glad those days are over.

Well or at least we tought they where, but then we started working on D365FO, and to be quite honest I would go back to working on that old mainframe ANYDAY.

Today every time I have to debug any code, no matter how small, it takes the debugger at least 5 minutes to start, WTF?????
And if you should be so unlucky that a change you have made requires a build of the model you are working on, well that 1 hour waiting, god forbid if you need to compile everything.

Now I know there has been some posts about this problem, and even one reply from a Microsoft employee saying that they understand out pain.

But still nothing has been done, and to be honest I am not really optimistic that any thing ever will, but I just had to get my pain out somehow

I have the same question (0)
  • Martin Dráb Profile Picture
    237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

    Your environment seems to be several times slower than my ones. What is your configuration (especially disks)?

  • Rudi Hansen Profile Picture
    4,075 on at

    Well I am seem to be seeing this on all different kind of environments, usually on Azure, where the last time i looked it was running on Standard_DS13_v2 machine.

    But I do also have the VHD 10.0.17 running on my Surface Pro 6 witch has an ok fast SSD, and that one is slightly faster than the azure one.

    But no matter what I have tried, the experience with especially debugging is still that is takes as best 3 mins from pressing the run button before the debugger is actually running any thing.

    Are you seeing better times than that?

    And if so what is the config of your machine?

  • Martin Dráb Profile Picture
    237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

    I'll try to measure it on Monday, but yes, I see much better times, despite the fact that it's not the the fastest environment I've ever had. I guess that the numbers are more like 1 minute / 5 minutes for me, not 5 minutes / 1 hour for you. Obviously the compilation time depends on the size of the packages, but I doubt you have twelve times more bigger.

    Please pay attention to the type (and the number) of disks in Azure as well. It can make a big difference.

    By the way, I don't typically use the run button. I compile the project when I need and then I merelly attach to the process that I want to debug (usually IISExpress or batch, or both). It might prove to be a more efficient approach for you as well (especially in cases when rebuilding it not needed), even without speeding up the environment as such.

  • Rudi Hansen Profile Picture
    4,075 on at

    But still even if we talk about getting to 1 min to start debugging, compared to AX2012 where its seconds, and also C# still seconds, would you not agree that is slower than it should be?

    And I know some things can be done to make it slightly faster, but my point is just that my enjoyment of working as a developer on D365FO is really low, and the constant waiting on the development environment is sometimes really frustrating, and I do just can’t believe that nothing can be done to make the experience better.

  • Martin Dráb Profile Picture
    237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

    Yes, I agree that it is slow and I indeed doesn't like it at all. I would like to write a piece of code, test in a few seconds, adjust the code, test it again...

    Therefore I completely agree with you that it's far from ideal. And we should give Microsoft feedback about their products, nevertheless this is a community forum where we discuss things among ourselves.

    I'm not sure if you're looking for suggestions or you just wanted to just express your frustration. But let me mentioned a few things anyway...

    The slowness has a reason - the application is enormous. Also, don't forget about the build, restarting the web server, loading files, loading settings from DB and so on. If you just want to debug, don't slow yourself by doing all these things. That's exactly why I avoid them unless necessary.

    Of course, if we're loading debugging symbols for a C# application several orders of magnitude smaller, it'll be several orders of magnitude faster. The problem is mainly caused by the architecture (set up decades ago) - F&O a monolithic application with thousand of files and gigabytes of data. It's not easy to solve; fortunately in F&O, Microsoft at least started the journey by splitting the app to several assemblies (packages). But much more would be needed.

    Note that the option to load symbols just for items in your solution is there exactly to help with the problem of having a large application with a huge amount code to debug (and symbols to load).

    It would be great if everything was faster, but I disagree that building a model needs to take one hour and there is nothing you can do to make your experience better.

  • Rudi Hansen Profile Picture
    4,075 on at
    [quote]

    I'm not sure if you're looking for suggestions or you just wanted to just express your frustration.

    [/quote]

    I was more just expressing my frustrations 

    And I am also aware of some of the things you can do to make it go a little faster, but that's a topic for another thread.

    But I would still like to know if Microsoft is doing anything to speed up the Dev environment, I know there was talk about it at some point, but I newer heard any news about it.

  • Martin Dráb Profile Picture
    237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

    Unfortunately that would be a question for Microsoft, not for the community.

    I'm personally not aware of any activity that could bring a significant change in the near future.

Under review

Thank you for your reply! To ensure a great experience for everyone, your content is awaiting approval by our Community Managers. Please check back later.

Helpful resources

Quick Links

Responsible AI policies

As AI tools become more common, we’re introducing a Responsible AI Use…

Neeraj Kumar – Community Spotlight

We are honored to recognize Neeraj Kumar as our Community Spotlight honoree for…

Leaderboard > Finance | Project Operations, Human Resources, AX, GP, SL

#1
Martin Dráb Profile Picture

Martin Dráb 611 Most Valuable Professional

#2
André Arnaud de Calavon Profile Picture

André Arnaud de Cal... 529 Super User 2025 Season 2

#3
Sohaib Cheema Profile Picture

Sohaib Cheema 285 User Group Leader

Last 30 days Overall leaderboard

Product updates

Dynamics 365 release plans