Creator's Android deployment is painfully slow - project compiles in 5 sec, deploys in 90+ sec
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Yesterday I timed the time it takes for a project to compile and deploy, to either device or emulator. For a "empty" project consisting only of the auto generated stub, it takes over 90 seconds to push the APK onto the target device.
Next thing I did was to clean up the project and rebuild everything but without deployment. It took exactly 5 seconds, from the first output logged by the initiation of compilation until the APK was created.
Needless to say, but having Creator waste minute and a half on deployment for a project that compiles in 5 seconds and should transfer in even less - this is unacceptable. It is like waiting 10 hours for a carwash that takes 10 minutes.
I ended up doing a workaround - a small application that launches a new process, compiles the project and sends the resulting package to the device over network to deploy - it ended up taking about 10 seconds in total, a huge improvement over the 1.5 minutes wait.
My first suspicion was that it was the android SDK responsible for the delay, but after investigation it does seem all the actual work is done in the first 5 seconds of compilation, the rest of the time it is just... waiting and doing nothing.
Someone should definitely look it up, although it "works" (finally) it is far from as it should be.
In general, I notice a HUGE difference between the performance of Creator depending on whether it is an Android release or not. Compared side by side, the creator from desktop packages is much faster to start and responsive to execute user input. It would seem like the "android" version has "lousy" binding to android features, which is what causes the perceived overhead. Not necessary the android tools themselves, but the link with creator.
I've tested under windows, but from toying with previous releases under linux, I recall the deployment problem was present as well. Config is pretty decent - 4.3 Ghz i7 32 gigs of ram, fast SSD - the problem isn't about lack of performance, but about the deployment process doing apparently nothing for a minute and a half.