Faster restart times for Sitecore (developer environments)

Question

Our team has just started developing for the Sitecore CMS.

We find that after every code change (.cs file) the app needs to restart and sitecore's restarting takes us up to 2.5 or 3 minutes. Our local pc's dev env communicates with a distant database. Aside from increasing our bandwidth to the database, are there ways speed up a sitecore restart (turn off caching etc.)

Are sitecore developers typically using IIS or VS's web dev env?

I assume using IIS would still present the same issue of restarting sitecore after every change?

Answer 1

Our local pc's dev env communicates with a distant database.

This is likely a big cause of the slow down. At least until its data cache gets built up, Sitecore does require quite a bit of DB communication. Development cycles will prevent it from building up any sort of useful data cache, since you're constantly restarting. I would suggest running a database closer to your development environment and use packages, or look into Team Development for Sitecore or Unicorn.

Answer 2

Maybe you can use CodeFile rather than CodeBehind. See section 2.2.3 of our Presentation Component Cookbook. Using this means that you never have to recompile a single page. Of course Sitecore hooks require recompilation.

Kind regards,

Alex de Groot

Sitecore Solution Architect

Answer 3

You can also add optimizeCompilations="true" to the <compilation> section in web.config if you run on webdev or IIS 7/7.5 with .NET 3.5 SP1 (or a hotfix from MS). There is more information on "Understanding ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation".