Why is the Workflow Designer so extremely slow when editing build process templates?

Question

There's not much more to add really than the above question.

I have a fairly simple build process template, which has hardly deviated from the default one.

I have two custom activities, which by recommendation live in a separate assembly within the same solution.

However....

Opening the template takes about two minutes.

Changing properties on an activity in the workflow, reordering activities in the workflow, adding activities to the workflow, all take between 30-60 seconds.

It's completely unusable at the moment and I'm beginning to regret moving from Cruise Control to TFS for build management :(

Does anyone else experience this or know a decent workaround? Is it better to simply edit the XAML text by hand?

Thanks

Answer 1

We just upgraded from TFS 2008 to 2010 and I have the very same experience as Steve opening the unedited DefaultTemplate.xaml file. VS 2010 even gets into not responding state. Hardware: 3GHz Dual Core, 4GB RAM.

It is not just slow but unusable.