Qt Creator version 4.10 .2 going unresponsive on Win10

[tommy]

I have been using Qt Creator on Win 10 for some years, and have learned to put up with its slow debugger interface and occasional slow editor response. But the last couple of updates have taken sluggish to a whole new level; and the latest (4.10.2) is actually pathological. I am wondering if anyone knows a reliable way to get back to the old so-so performance level?

One very obvious symptom is that clicking on the "file" menu button now often triggers a long (up to 1 minute) period of "not responding", after which the menu DOES NOT drop down. I occasionally see long delays during code editing, often with little progress bars showing. This never happened with older versions.

Clang plugins are disabled, so that's not the cause.

[aha_1980]

Hi @tommy,

sounds indeed strange.

You can try to start Creator with the command line parameter -tcs (temporary clean settings) and see if that helps? In that case, you'd only have to find out which setting is causing the slow down...

Good luck and regards

[tommy]

@aha_1980 Thanks, -tcs cleared the condition. Does that create a persistent state, or must I still configure all the options by hand?
The problem looks like a network operation timeout. Is there any way to identify which options might invoke net ops?

[tommy]

If I run qtcreator 4.10.2 without -tcs it goes unresponsive for periods of 30 sec or more during text editing -- sometimes showing progress bar "updating locator caches" which is always at 100% -- and even oftener during debugging, with no message.

This is seriously buggy behavior and I would like to file a bug report. Where?

[aha_1980]

Hi @tommy,

sorry, I missed you post.

Yes, -tcs is only temporary. In your situation, I'd suggest to remove the settings permanently (they should be in your user profile below AppData) and to configure Creator from scratch.

I've had some problems too when settings have grown over years - not as massive as your's to be honest.

The problem looks like a network operation timeout. Is there any way to identify which options might invoke net ops?

Have you edited projects on network shares or have projects with include paths pointing there? 30 seconds indeed point to some network timeout.

This is seriously buggy behavior and I would like to file a bug report. Where?

that would be bugreports.qt.io/QTCRREATORBUG. But they will surely ask you to run Creator with -tcs and then stepwise find out which setting is wrong.

So better find that out before creating a bug. If you do, please add a link here so others can follow.

Thanks and regards

[tommy]

aha_1980 -- thanks. Could you point me to specific instructions for "stepwise find out which setting is wrong"? Does that mean using the options menus, or something lower level?

[aha_1980]

@tommy

Does that mean using the options menus

Exactly. Unfortunately I don't know a better way.

Regards

[tommy]

@aha_1980 Here's how I bootstrapped new working settings for QtCreator.
On Windows the settings reside in <user>\Appdata\Roaming\QtProject, which contains files QtCreator.db, QtCreator.ini and directory qtcreator with lots of subdirectories, xml files etc.
Renaming that directory then running QtCreator created a new settings directory (from a template kept in the Qt distro) . After that, QtCreator started behaving normally, though of course without any memory of previous projects or kit associations.
Copying the QtCreator.ini file from the renamed directory restored those memories but did not make the bad behavior come back.
Apparently the root problem is an incompatibility between Qt Creator 4.10.2 and some old file in the settings folder. In my case those files were created years ago by QtCreator 3.5. And since 3.5 does not even support VC 2015, I guess it was high time for a change.