TL;DR: the idea is please make building as fast in new LabVIEWs post 2023 Q3 as old ones when you have a clear compiled object cache and when your file timestamps have changed.
LabVIEW 2023 Q3 includes a major change to the app builder:
LabVIEW 2023 Q3 has improved cache behavior for packed project libraries and applications.
The first build will populate the cache, and then the subsequent builds will be much faster.
Great! It is pretty easy to confirm this and it works! Unless...
1. File timestamps change - such as when you clean a directory and clone project files in your CI job
- Git does not make file timestamps match "commit date" - when you clone fresh all the timestamps are now o'clock, when you change branches all the files that change are reset to now
2. The cache is cleared prior to the build - such as when you want a repeatable build unaffected by prior state so you set your CI jobs to clear it before each build
3. You are doing a "first build" on a new project - such as when you use a container or VM disk image to reset the entire environment to a clean state prior to your CI job
In all my testing, any of these conditions pretty strictly cause builds to be slower in LabVIEW 2023 Q3 than in earlier versions: with a clear cache by typically ~60%, with new timestamps and a persisted cache depends on how much of the code has new timestamps.
In other words, I expect most everyone using CI will find building slower in 2023 Q3+ than later versions. So, the idea is: whatever optimizations were done, include an option to revert to the old behavior - build spec, config ini, editor option, whatever.
