v0.1.5 – Performance & Architecture Update
Pre-release
🚀 Highlights
v0.1.5 is a performance-focused release dedicated to optimizing the planning engine while preserving identical functionality and calculation results.
No scheduling logic has been modified, no workflows have changed, and no features have been removed. Every optimization was validated through profiling and regression testing to ensure identical behavior with significantly improved responsiveness.
⚡ Performance Engineering
This release introduces a large set of internal optimizations across the application, including:
- Gantt rendering pipeline optimizations
- Timeline generation batching
- Analytics write-back batching
- Left panel generation batching
- Dependency rendering optimizations
- Reduced Excel COM interactions
- Startup architecture simplification
- Extensive profiler-driven refactoring
Together, these changes noticeably improve the responsiveness of the application, especially on large planning files.
📅 Gantt Improvements
The Gantt engine received the largest share of the optimization work.
Highlights include:
- Faster Gantt refresh
- Faster Day / Week / Month switching
- Reduced redraw overhead
- Significantly reduced Full Update flickering
- Lazy geometry repair after Full Update to preserve perfect alignment without forcing unnecessary redraws
- Local dependency anchor caching while preserving identical routing behavior
- Faster left panel generation
- Improved responsiveness on large schedules
⚙️ Planning Engine
Several core components were optimized without changing scheduling behavior.
Improvements include:
- Faster WBS → CALC synchronization
- Faster Analytics propagation back to WBS
- Reduced rebuilds of internal logic structures
- Faster formula restoration
- Multiple in-memory batch operations
- Reduced Excel COM overhead throughout the calculation pipeline
Planning calculations, critical path analysis, float computation and scheduling logic remain unchanged.
🚀 Startup
Workbook startup was substantially redesigned.
Instead of rebuilding multiple visual components during startup, the application now restores its runtime state directly from the persisted settings.
Benefits include:
- Faster workbook opening
- Elimination of unnecessary visual rebuilds
- Startup VBA overhead reduced by more than 90%
- Improved overall application responsiveness immediately after launch
🧹 Internal Improvements
Although mostly invisible to end users, this release significantly improves the internal architecture.
Highlights:
- Extensive profiler-driven optimization campaign
- New profiling instrumentation for future performance work
- Cleaner internal architecture
- Reduced technical debt
- Improved maintainability for future features
✅ Compatibility
- Fully compatible with existing planning files
- No migration required
- No workflow changes for end users
- No changes to scheduling calculations or planning results
📈 Expected Benefits
Typical improvements observed during profiling include:
- Dramatically faster workbook startup
- Faster Full Update operations
- Faster Gantt rendering
- Smoother Day / Week / Month switching
- Lower rendering overhead on large projects
- Improved responsiveness across the entire application
Developer Notes
v0.1.5 marks the first release primarily dedicated to performance engineering rather than new functionality.
Following the successful validation of the planning engine on real-world projects, the focus shifted toward identifying and eliminating architectural bottlenecks through systematic profiling, targeted optimizations, and regression testing.
This work establishes a stronger technical foundation for future development while delivering a noticeably smoother experience for everyday use, particularly on large and complex planning files.