tatimagdalena / graphqlstudy

🧠 Study project / ApolloGraphQL

GraphQLStudy

The goal of this project is to analyze how adding the ApolloGraphQL to a small project will affect it's build time.

How to measure build times

Xcode doesn't generate build times by default. To do so, the following command was entered on the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dt.Xcode ShowBuildOperationDuration YES

The build time is then displayed in the activity viewer.

Activity viewer is the window in the middle top of Xcode where it shows what is currently being build and how far in the process it is.

Summary

First builds (after clean)

Condition	Build times (Big project)	Build times (Small project)
Without Apollo	~120s	~6s
With Apollo - empty query	~133s	~9s
With a query	~145s	~12s
Decreasing query size	~128s	~10s

Rebuilding without changes

Condition	Rebuild times (Big project)	Rebuild times (Small project)
Without Apollo	~5,5s	~1s
With Apollo - empty query	~6s	~4s
With a query	~8s	~4s
Decreasing query size	~16s	~5s

Changing branches (without clean)

Condition	Rebuild times (Big project)	Rebuild times (Small project)
Changing query (smaller to bigger)	~14s	~5s
Changing query (bigger to smaller)	~12s	~5s
Changing classes (less to more)	~19s	~5s
Changing classes (more to less)	~110s	~5s

Build time measurements (Raw data)

Smaller project

Empty project

• First build after clean: 4.456s | 11.502s | 5.572s | 9.321s | 10.059s

  Average time: 8,182s

After adding a Cartfile and Carthage script

• First build after clean: 4.076s | 3.044s | 8.810s | 4.868s | 7.512s

  Average time: 5,662s

• Rebuild without changes: 0.777s | 1.042s | 0.855s | 0.841s | 0.876s

  Average time: 0,8842s

After adding Apollo with empty query

• First build after clean: 8.425s | 5.847s | 12.270s | 9.525s | 6.838s

  Average time: 8,581s

• Rebuild without changes: 3.962s | 3.748s | 5.023s | 3.616s | 3.811s

  Average time: 4,032s

After adding a query and calling it from code

• First build after clean: 12.226s | 6.569s | 8.000s | 7.273s | 5.723s

  Average time: 7,958s

• Rebuild without changes: 3.700s | 3.568s | 4.109s | 3.830s | 3.886s

  Average time: 3,819s

Making the query smaller

• First build after clean: 10.210s | 7.012s | 5.987s | 9.158s | 6.047s

  Average time: 7,683s

• Rebuild without changes: 5.896s | 3.728s | 4.264s | 3.945s | 4.789s

  Average time: 4,524s

Changing branches that changes only the query (and it's use)

• From smaller to bigger query: 6.137s | 5.267s | 6.176s

  Average time: 5,86s

• From bigger to smaller query: 5.613s | 5.086s | 5.133s

  Average time: 5,28s

Changing branches that changes only classes not related to Apollo

• From less classes to more classes: 4.628s | 4.985s | 4.772s

  Average time: 4,80s

• From more classes to less classes: 4.457s | 4.546s | 4.699s

  Average time: 4,57s

Bigger project

After adding a Cartfile and Carthage script

• First build after clean: 111,669 + 124,746 + 129,718
• Rebuild without changes: 3,411 + 3,388 + 9,618

After adding Apollo with empty query

• First build: 133,102s
• Rebuild: 5,8s

After adding a query and calling it from code

• First build: 145,879s
• Rebuild: 8,273s

Making the query smaller

• First build: 128,342s
• Rebuild: 16,285s

Changing branches that changes only the query (and it's use)

• Switch (smaller to bigger): 14,060s
• Switch (bigger to smaller): 12,932s

Changing branches that changes only classes not related to Apollo

• Switch less to more classes: 15,960 + 21,234 + 20,756 = 19,32s
• Switch more classes to less: 99,975 + 114,129 + 117,245 = 110,45s

Conclusion

The adding of the Apollo framework didn't seem to be a problem until switching between branches with different classes in a bigger project. As seen in the building log and confirmed by the building times, when changing to a branch with more classes the incremental build seems to be broken, once all code are being compiled again. ⚠️ The same has happened when switching between branches that didn't have Apollo added, demonstrating that this problem was not related to it.

Another problem was an error when building the bigger project with Apollo run script. This error didn't fail the build and everything seemed to work fine, but it is not guaranteed that everything will be working when being sent to the AppStore, for example. After all, there is an error being shown. This seems to be a random error and it was already reported on the Apollo Github as an issue, but so far no solution has been presented.