Why is Dreamweaver CS5 so slow to sync files when target is local system folder?

Question

Just curious about the cause and if there is a way to speed it up. I'm running MAMP, so I configured a site in DW CS5 to "Connect using: Local/Network" and pointed it to a folder on my computer. There are about 1800 files to sync, I run transformations and minor edits on a select few of those files, and infrequently touch all of them. When I click the synch button DW takes FOREVER (and about 5 minutes) to look for changes then another 5 minutes to copy files. It's an impossible workflow. So, I wrote an Ant script to unconditionally copy the entire 1800 files from the working directory to the target directory. The Ant copy runs in about 4 seconds. Really. SWOOSH and it's done.

Update: I'm now working on a project that uses MathJax, which has 30,000+ files. Prior to adding MathJax into the project, I was really enjoying the workflow. Using one tool to edit, view, and update is really nice. When I dropped MathJax into place the update to local file system is impossible. I've let it run for over an hour now just because I'm curious. This is surely a bug in Dreamweaver.

So, why is DW so slow and can it be fixed?

Solution

Dreamweaver can create a cache file in which to store information about all the links in your local folder. This cache file is updated invisibly as you add, change or delete links on your local site. This can have as effect the extreme slow-down of file copy operations.

To disable, use the Edit > Preference menu to bring up the Preferences Dialog. In the General Category, set "Update Links When Moving Files" to Never. Never does not automatically update all links to and from the copied documents.

See also Why has Dreamweaver become slow/unresponsive?, where two solutions are listed (to do while DW is closed) :

1. Corrupt cache : Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver [version]\Configuration and delete the SiteCache folder.
2. Corrupt synchronization files : Navigate to target directory, open the '_notes' folder and delete the file named 'dwsync.xml'. Search if you have such a file on your local computer.

Comments

[Michael Prescott]

Do you know of a specific bug, feature request, or forum where I could up-vote the issue along with the other users?

[Michael Prescott]

That makes sense to me; however, I'm still watching it write png files, which the MathJax javascript dynamically references. No hard-coded links to these images. Plus, it is getting slower and slower. It must be creating a history or cache file everything. I doubt I'll change anything in the MathJax library. Can DW CS5 be configured to ignore certain directories?

[harrymc]

The above change in Preferences might be worth trying. I have also added a couple of other possibilities.

[Community]

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[DarkDiamond]

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