Flash Builder 4 Extremely slow under Windows 7 + Java

Question

Hello,
I have the following configuration:
Sony VAIO SZ
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1 GHz (T8100)
4GB DDR3
NVidia 8400M GS
320GB (7200 RPM) HDD
Windows7 Ultimate (6.1.7600)
I'm trying to use Adobe Flash Builder 4 (build 272416) in Trial mode.
I was working for a long time already with the Flex Builder Plug-in 3. Compilation time was always a headache, true, but it still was affordable. But with the Flash Builder 4 production that became so bad that I can't simply use it event to test.
When started form the "clean" workspace, bundled Eclipse and only one project (Flex) is created - everything looks fine. Even if you add a "hello world" pop-up to your application (that's sarcasm, yeah =)
The situation changes dramatically when you have any number (greater than zero of course) of Java projects in your workspace.
Compilation time skyrockets to about 1 - 2 minutes - first (on an empty project created with wizard). Second - it starts crashing with or without reason.
When I'm trying to create a new Flex project (having several Java projects in the workspace) - the moment the wizard is complete and it's going to show me the contents of the newly created MXML (yes, a few lines with no logic at all) it crashes. When I'm trying to open existing project - well, it opens, but compilation times are greater than 2 minutes (that's a tiny project with a few screens with primitive design, three AS classes and two CSS files and one image included) whenever I just put an empty string to even the main MXML.
When I'm trying to switch to design view - it crashes 80% of time. The rest 20% it show "gray field" and bugs UI completely.
When building starts - the only way to avoid it ... well ... go drink a tea. It's impossible to cancel and if I try to cancel it - it hangs forever. Only killing the eclipse process helps.
And, really, 2 minutes of compilation time? Are you serious? It's like, change the line of code, save, wait 2 minutes with 50% chance of observing never-ending activity?
Btw, I've tested the Flash Builder Beta - there were no such problems. Everything was really cool and smooth. Compilation time was even faster than Flex Builder 3. And such a surprise with the production version.
It's all with the JDK 6u14 (yes, I've tested it with the most recent one - 6u18 - the same picture).
So, is there anyone experiencing the same behavior and any hints on how to fix it? It's really annoying especially knowing and waiting to get hands on all those great SDK 4 features.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I think the longer compile times when embedding fonts are sort of to be expected. You're embedding an awful lot of glyphs into your SWF (versus using device fonts or setting an explicit unicode range).
For example, I tried with the following simple example in Flex 4.0:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:Application xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
        xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
        xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx"
        applicationComplete="lbl.text = (loaderInfo.bytesTotal / 1024).toFixed(2) + ' KB';">
    <fx:Style>
        @namespace s "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark";
        @namespace mx "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx";
        @font-face {
            fontFamily: Calibri;
            fontWeight: normal;
            fontStyle: normal;
            src: url("c:/windows/fonts/calibri.ttf");
        @font-face {
            fontFamily: Calibri;
            fontWeight: bold;
            fontStyle: normal;
            src: url("c:/windows/fonts/calibrib.ttf");
        @font-face {
            fontFamily: Calibri;
            fontWeight: normal;
            fontStyle: italic;
            src: url("c:/windows/fonts/calibrii.ttf");
        @font-face {
            fontFamily: Calibri;
            fontWeight: bold;
            fontStyle: italic;
            src: url("c:/windows/fonts/calibriz.ttf");
        global {
             fontFamily: Calibri;
             fontSize: 24;
    </fx:Style>
    <s:controlBarContent>
        <s:Label id="lbl" color="red" fontWeight="bold" />
    </s:controlBarContent>
    <s:VGroup horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0">
        <s:Label text="Calibri regular" />
        <s:Label text="Calibri bold" fontWeight="bold" />
        <s:Label text="Calibri italic" fontStyle="italic" />
        <s:Label text="Calibri bold+italic" fontWeight="bold" fontStyle="italic" />
    </s:VGroup>
</s:Application>
Now, the .SWF file in my /bin-debug/ folder was pretty large (~1440 KB -- or about 1.4 MB). When I exported a release version of the .SWF using Builder that number dropped down to ~970 KB (or 0.9 MB). Still rather large.
Typically when embedding fonts you'll want to specify a unicode range so you only embed the characters you care about (English uppercase/lowercase, punctuation, numbers, etc). Or you could embed Thai ranges or whatever else you want.
So if I specify the following unicode range for each of the four embed statements, the SWF sizes drop considerably:
unicode-range 
: U+0020-002F,U+0030-0039,U+003A-0040,U+0041-005A,U+005B-0060,U+0061-007A,U+007B-007E;
/bin-debug/: ~970 KB (67%)
/bin-release/: ~520 KB (53%)
You can find some examples of unicode ranges in the /frameworks/flash-unicode-table.xml file in the Flex SDK. Also, you can specify custom named unicode ranges in your /frameworks/flex-config.xml file:
<!-- Defines ranges that can be used across multiple font-face declarations. -->
<!-- See flash-unicode-table.xml for more examples. -->
<!-- not set -->
<!--
<languages>
  <language-range>
    <lang>englishRange</lang>
    <range>U+0020-007E</range>
  </language-range>
</languages>
-->
And this way you could just specify a unicode-range of "englishRange" instead of having to do U+0020-002F, etc.
Hope that helps,
Peter