Occasional Crash on Compile in Bug Reports

ID:92408
 
Mar 3 2010, 9:29 pm
BYOND Version:464
Operating System:Windows Vista Home Basic 64-bit
Web Browser:Firefox 3.0.15
Applies to:Dream Maker
Status: Unverified
Thus far we've been unable to verify or reproduce this bug. Or, it has been observed but it cannot be triggered with a reliable test case. You can help us out by editing your report or adding a comment with more information.
Descriptive Problem Summary:

Numbered Steps to Reproduce Problem:

Code Snippet (if applicable) to Reproduce Problem:
Large DM Project - 400 DM code files, many icons, quite an extensive object tree (SS13 project)

Expected Results:
Full compile

Actual Results:
Occasionally, especially when the system is under load from other applications, DM will hang when trying to compile and crash out with a not responding error.
Having bugs causes this to occur much more frequently.

Does the problem occur:
Every time? Or how often?
At least once a day.
In other games?
N/A
In other user accounts?
Yes, other dev team members are expressing the same issue.
On other computers?

When does the problem NOT occur?
I really can not narrow down a specific scenario. It is rather random.

Did the problem NOT occur in any earlier versions? If so, what was the last version that worked? (Visit http://www.byond.com/download/build to download old versions for testing.)
This is a continual issue although the newer BYOND version seems to be slightly better about this.

Workarounds:
I can't say. I personally feel as if the compile program is buckling trying to compile such a large project and the OS thinks it is trapped in a non-responsive state. Perhaps the compile process needs to sleep occasionally on very large projects?
#1 Mar 4 2010, 3:36 am
I've had this problem when I still had 1x 1GB of single-channel RAM memory. The crashes stopped completely when I upgraded my memory to 2x 2GB dual-channel (un-buffered)
#2 Mar 4 2010, 4:16 am
I have 4 gigs of dual channel ram and this still happens to me often enough.
#3 Mar 4 2010, 6:54 am
No idea if it's related but sometimes when I go to compile files my computer completely shuts off and reboots. I have reinstalled windows and it does it still.(Prior to 464, hasn't occured with this version yet) However what makes it interesting is it only happens once in a blue moon.
#4 Mar 4 2010, 7:00 am
A memory issue is definitely the most likely culprit. I'm curious how much you're using right now. That's an interesting theory about responsiveness and sleeping, though.

Obviously this is hard to look into without a gigantic project to compile. The most recent generic project I was given access to for testing did not show any problems in the compiler except that compilation took a very long time, so I think this is highly system-dependent.
#5 Mar 4 2010, 11:01 am
I have 8 gigabytes of RAM and rarely go over 2 gigabytes of utilization during the entire compile process (this includes other system programs, etc.)

Even so, the compile process did not really cause that much of a spike in memory utilization.
#6 Mar 4 2010, 12:14 pm
Huh. Well, that probably does rule out a memory issue then, unless your RAM was bad--but that would probably manifest in other ways on your system.
#7 Mar 14 2010, 9:14 pm
Turning off Show All Nodes in the object tree seems to lessen the occurrence of the issue.