Xcode build extremely slow - only when using cloud_firestore plugin

[walsha2]

Summary of Issue

Simply adding cloud_firestore to pubspec.yaml results in a huge increase in iOS xcode build times. The issue can be recreate with nothing more than a simple flutter create application and minor changes to pubspec.yaml.

MacOS Mojave 10.14.6
Xcode 10.3

> flutter --version
Flutter 1.8.4-pre.91 • channel master • https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git
Framework • revision 8fdd759225 (11 hours ago) • 2019-08-04 00:56:23 -0400
Engine • revision c8f4f5d5cc
Tools • Dart 2.5.0 (build 2.5.0-dev.1.0 9bb446aae1)

> flutter create test_cloud_firestore
> cd test_cloud_firestore

Without cloud_firestore

Just to show that it is specifically the cloud_firestore plugin that causes this issue I will add some other firebase plugins to pubspec.yaml:

firebase_core: ^0.4.0+1
firebase_analytics: ^4.0.2

Now we build the app:

> flutter packages get
> time flutter build ios
....
Xcode build done. 
real	0m41.014s

Okay that looks reasonable.

With cloud_firestore

Simply add the latest version of cloud_firestore plugin to pubspec.yaml (no other changes):

cloud_firestore: ^0.12.9

Now we build the application again:

> flutter packages get
> time flutter build ios
....
Xcode build done. 
real	6m40.982s

Yes... that is right. A six minute increase in iOS build times just from adding the cloud_firestore plugin to pubspec.yaml. Again, no changes were made to the flutter create generated application, this is simply changes to pubspec.yaml.

Logs

I did confirm that this issue persists on other flutter channels as well as other later versions of cloud_firestore plugin.

> flutter doctor -v
[✓] Flutter (Channel master, v1.8.4-pre.91, on Mac OS X 10.14.6 18G84, locale en-US)
    • Flutter version 1.8.4-pre.91 at /Users/taza/Applications/flutter
    • Framework revision 8fdd759225 (11 hours ago), 2019-08-04 00:56:23 -0400
    • Engine revision c8f4f5d5cc
    • Dart version 2.5.0 (build 2.5.0-dev.1.0 9bb446aae1)

 
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 29.0.1)
    • Android SDK at /Users/taza/Library/Android/sdk
    • Android NDK location not configured (optional; useful for native profiling support)
    • Platform android-29, build-tools 29.0.1
    • Java binary at: /Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jre/jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java
    • Java version OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_152-release-1343-b01)
    • All Android licenses accepted.

[✓] Xcode - develop for iOS and macOS (Xcode 10.3)
    • Xcode at /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
    • Xcode 10.3, Build version 10G8
    • CocoaPods version 1.7.5

[✓] Android Studio (version 3.4)
    • Android Studio at /Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents
    • Flutter plugin version 37.1.1
    • Dart plugin version 183.6270
    • Java version OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_152-release-1343-b01)

[✓] VS Code (version 1.36.1)
    • VS Code at /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents
    • Flutter extension version 3.3.0

[walsha2]

@collinjackson @blasten Any thoughts on this? This is a serious issue for development if each build takes this long. I have seen other issues related to "slow Xcode builds" (or something similar) but I don't think anyone has explicitly tied it to cloud_firestore plugin. That is literally the only change as you can see from my simple step by step recreation above.

[walsha2]

I think this is related to #27771 and possibly #24909- but that thread is quiet and no responses. @orestesgaolin @JosephDunivan @jrm2k6 have you found any solutions for this?

[collinjackson]

I don't have much insight on solutions to offer here but I can reproduce the issue. It seems to be a build issue that happens when adding a dependency on the Firestore CocoaPod to a Flutter app.

Building the basic "flutter create" example app normally takes around 17 seconds for me according to time. Building the same app with the Firestore CocoaPod added takes well over a minute.

$ time flutter build ios --simulator
Building com.example.simpleExample for simulator (ios)...
Running pod install...                                             10.8s
Running Xcode build...                                                  
                                                   
 ├─Assembling Flutter resources...                           1.7s
 └─Compiling, linking and signing...                         9.2s
Xcode build done.                                           75.4s
Built /Users/jackson/git/simple_example/build/ios/iphonesimulator/Runner.app.

real	1m32.318s
user	0m16.984s
sys	0m4.776s

Here's what's getting pulled in when you include the Firestore CocoaPod:

• BoringSSL-GRPC
• FirebaseAuthInterop
• FirebaseFirestore
• Protobuf
• gRPC-C++
• gRPC-Core
• leveldb-library

I'm not sure if there's much we can do on the Flutter side as it's all stuff that Firebase is pulling in automatically.

I didn't see any issues in the https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk database referencing build times but you could open an issue there if you think that there's something that could be done.

[vagrantrobbie]

We also have this issue in our project and it's stopped us using Firestore specifically because of this problem

[jrm2k6]

@walsha2 No solutions found except waiting, unfortunately. It was for a side project of mine, so not a big deal and I have moved on anyway.

[walsha2]

@collinjackson thanks for replying. Ok yea I noticed that too and assumed it was something in those other pods that cloud_firestore brings in.

My only question now is, how is anyone using firestore and flutter? I'm surprised that this is not a problem that every person is having. My only explanation is that there must be some sort of iOS and/or Xcode version dependency that keeps other users from seeing it?

---

I spent more time than I want to admit looking into each of those pods to see if I could glean anything. First hunch was to see if the new Apple FIle System (APFS) shipped with 10.13+ has anything to do with it. I did notice that Protobuf had a lot of issues importing header files because APFS is now case sensitive. If you look at the Xcode build logs you will see a bunch of warnings like the following:

........test_firestore/ios/Pods/Headers/Private/Protobuf/GPBProtocolBuffers.h:55:10: warning: non-portable path to file
      '<protobuf/Any.pbobjc.h>'; specified path differs in case from file name on disk [-Wnonportable-include-path]
 #import <Protobuf/Any.pbobjc.h>

I could not link the above APFS related issue directly with compile time, but it does seem notable. Other than that anything gRPC related seemed to take the most time to compile.

---

I am not sure what to do to elevate this issue to core Flutter/Firestore team. I feel like if Flutter is to be adopted as a framework, the first logical backend to use is Firestore and one would think that it would be somewhat seamless (even in this beta stage). An issue like this could be a nonstarter for some developers and might be enough to detour some early adopters away from the framework altogether.

[blasten]

There's an open PR to fix the protobuf warning issue: protocolbuffers/protobuf#6464.

[collinjackson]

The best way to elevate Flutter issues is to use thumbs-up since that's how we're prioritizing our efforts.

For local builds, I wonder if precompiled CocoaPods dependencies would help. https://guides.cocoapods.org/plugins/pre-compiling-dependencies.html

[jmagman]

Unscientifically on my machine, times for each library:
FirebaseFirestore - 48.9s
gRPC-Core - 15.2s
gRPC-C++ - 9.2s
BoringSSL-GRPC - 8.8s
Protobuf - 1.9s
nanopb - 0.6s
FirebaseCore - 0.6s
FirebaseInstanceID - 1.0s

[jonahwilliams]

It sounds like the pod install is essential the build framework/plugin equivalent for iOS?