Compiler broken for entire project

This is on the Nvidia Waveworks custom build of 4.15.

No code will compile at all. There is no error, no crash, it simply compiles for days until I stop it. I can’t even create a new C++ class because it will never finish compiling. This only happens with my game project, I don’t have any issues with other projects.

Here’s the output log from building a simple class in Visual Studio. It runs until the build starts, then 10 hours later I stopped it as it wasn’t doing anything.

How can I diagnose and fix this issue?

Thanks,
Joshua

Testing some more, it looks like the problem affects the entire custom build rather than one project. Stock UE4 versions are fine.

Thanks for the response. I hadn’t thought of trying verbose logging or Process Monitor, that would definitely be a good thing to do. First of all though I’ll try rebuilding Waveworks as it doesn’t take very long, then try your other suggestions, but judging by the problems I’ve been having Amishism may be my best option…

Thanks again, I’ll let you know what I find out!

Ok, so I tried a a bunch of those suggestions and it turned out that the problem was caused by Avast. I turned that off and for some reason it’s fine now. Thank you for your help!

Mate, that sounds really frustrating.

Answering the first part of your question, “How can I diagnose this issue?” I’d firstly attempt to pop on verbose logging for MS Build processes. This should show you exactly what’s going on, and possibly if it’s stuck on something could show you the problem resource (Visual Studio: Tools | OptionsProjects and Solutions | Build & RunMSBuild project build output verbosity, MSBuild project build log verbosity).

Further to that if that yields nothing (some part of MSBuild itself stuck and not yield any log) I’d see about bringing in the big guns; download Russinovic’s Process Monitor and it will allow you to, using kernel hooks, to monitor all files, registry access and network access that MSBuild is attempting to request. Put on a filter for Process Name = MsBuild.exe. It’s possible that this make some sense of what’s causing the process to hang.

If all else fails you could download the Windows symbol files and attach a debugger to MSBuild.exe, break execution, trawl the threads and see what it was doing that’s causing the problem. (Bit of a sledgehammer approach, but goes direct to the source of the problem).

Further to that, you could try the project on another machine, or try rolling back from SCM and see if the error still occurs. I doubt it would be something like a recursive include as I compilers pick up on this nowadays; that said a rollback would resolve that anyway. There’s of course the less scientific options: reinstall Visual Studio, reinstall windows, renounce computer and embrace Amishism, etc.

As far as fixing it’s concerned, it of course really depends on the results of the diagnostics. It could be any one of a number of issues: MSBuild configuration, Waveworks issue, Visual Studio environment settings, firewall, antivirus, it could even be a int13h/UEFI error from accessing a certain file.

Let me know how it goes I’d be interested to know what the root cause of it is.

Nice one! Looks like Amos and Miriam are going to have one less singing round the campfire tonight!

NB. You know the first thing I wrote in my last para was antivirus as a potential problem outcome. Then I demoted it because often people say it’s “probably the antivirus” but let’s face it it hardly ever is; it’s normally a scapegoat.