Xamarin.Android builds/deployments are very slow. How to speed them up?

Question

We have a large Xamarin.Android project with two depending projects and a bunch of third party dll's. Doing a debug deployment (without any changes) onto a Hax-x86 Emulator or a Nexus 5 device is painfully slow (> 80 seconds). For comparison the Xamarin.iOS version of the App deploys in under seven seconds onto a real device. To test the deployment times I've also created a fresh Xamarin.Android project which deploys in about four seconds. When I add a depending project, the deploy time goes up to seven seconds. When I add a layout file to the depending project the deployment time increases to about ten seconds. Is it possible to speed the Android build and deployment up with Xamarin Studio? A big Eclipse Android Projects is deployed rather quick in comparison. Update: Just running the installation build step takes about 40 seconds: ``` time xbuild /t:Install BigApp.csproj ... ... ... Time Elapsed 00:00:42.8526970 ``` about half the time is spend where the above command prints to cons…

Accepted Answer

I contacted the Xamarin guys about this problem and they fixed two issues in Xamarin.Android:

- https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16622 (provided since Xamarin Android 4.12.0)

- https://bugzilla.xamarin.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15162 (provided since Xamarin Android 4.10.0)

The build time for my huge project without any changes is now ~5 seconds. And when making a code change in the deepest depending lib a deploy cycle does not take longer than 16 seconds.

Xamarin.Android builds/deployments are very slow. How to speed them up?

Solution

Problem