dotnet publish -f net8.0-ios -c Release is way too slow

[cmydur]

Description

My Publish times for iOS are close an hour or so.

Steps to Reproduce

Create a new MAUI App build the app run dotnet publish -f net8.0-ios -c Release

Link to public reproduction project repository

No response

Version with bug

8.0.6

Is this a regression from previous behavior?

Not sure, did not test other versions

Last version that worked well

Unknown/Other

Affected platforms

iOS

Affected platform versions

iOS

Did you find any workaround?

No

Relevant log output

No response

[mobilewares]

We consistently get ~5 minutes build times on our DevOps MacVM based pipeline (and same with 8.0.6 nugets) for the iOS build - which is typically a lot slower vs a local Mac machine. We do a MAUI workload install & a dotnet restore prior to this & it's a very large complex project with a lot of 3rd party components in use.
Are you able to see what point in the output/build process it's taking so long?

[cmydur]

I'm running on my local Mac, this is where it is stuck for long time. One thing to note is Android build does not take as long

Optimizing assemblies for size may change the behavior of the app. Be sure to test after publishing. See: https://aka.ms/dotnet-illink Optimizing assemblies for size. This process might take a while.

[javrro]

Im getting the same issue. Though I havent waited the hour to see if it finishes the build.

[cmydur]

It will finish after an hour

[vchelaru]

I am also experiencing this problem - no comments from the maintainers on why this is happening or when it might be fixed?

[josemnbcamacho]

I'm also having this problem. ADO pipelines were failing because build time was longer than one hour.

Added this to Release configuration and build times came back to normal:

<MtouchUseLlvm>False</MtouchUseLlvm>
<AotAssemblies>True</AotAssemblies>

[ninachen03]

Verified this issue with Visual Studio 17.6.10(build 428) ,I can not repro it.

[MrZander]

I am also experiencing this issue.

Running dotnet 8.0.302

dotnet publish -f net8.0-ios -c Release -p:ArchiveOnBuild=true -p:RuntimeIdentifier=ios-arm64 -p:CodesignKey="iPhone Distribution" -p:CodesignProvision="My Provision" -p:ServerAddress=omitted -p:ServerUser=omitted -p:ServerPassword=omitted -p:TcpPort=omitted -p:_DotNetRootRemoteDirectory=/Users/myuser/Library/Caches/Xamarin/XMA/SDKs/dotnet/ -v diag

Adding <MtouchUseLlvm>False</MtouchUseLlvm> dropped my release build time from 2.5 hours to ~10 minutes. Still pretty dang slow, but it is at least manageable.

[pluggy]

Same problem here. Half an hour for a release build is too much.

[MartyIX]

(Would it help here to produce a binlog? See https://github.com/dotnet/maui/wiki/Capturing-Binary-Logs or https://dfederm.com/debugging-msbuild/. Just an idea.)

[rbev]

I'm also having this problem. ADO pipelines were failing because build time was longer than one hour.

Added this to Release configuration and build times came back to normal:

<MtouchUseLlvm>False</MtouchUseLlvm>
<AotAssemblies>True</AotAssemblies>

Did this have any significant impact on package size or performance?

[rabuckley]

I'm hitting very slow release build times too. Running the following on my M1 MacBook Pro took over 13 minutes. Publishing the same app takes just over one minute. Is such a large difference expected? Is the big difference between building for simulator vs. a real device?

dotnet new maui --name MauiBuildTime
cd MauiBuildTime
dotnet build -c release -f net9.0-ios -bl

Machine Specs and dotnet info

macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 (24A348) [Darwin 24.0.0]
Apple M1 Pro, 1 CPU, 10 logical and 10 physical cores

---

.NET SDK:
 Version:           9.0.100-rc.2.24474.11
 Commit:            315e1305db
 Workload version:  9.0.100-manifests.3424025a
 MSBuild version:   17.12.0-preview-24473-03+fea15fbd1

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     Mac OS X
 OS Version:  15.0
 OS Platform: Darwin
 RID:         osx-arm64
 Base Path:   /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/9.0.100-rc.2.24474.11/

.NET workloads installed:
 [maui]
   Installation Source: SDK 9.0.100-rc.2
   Manifest Version:    9.0.0-rc.2.24503.2/9.0.100-rc.2
   Manifest Path:       /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk-manifests/9.0.100-rc.2/microsoft.net.sdk.maui/9.0.0-rc.2.24503.2/WorkloadManifest.json
   Install Type:        FileBased

Build

dotnet build -c release -f net9.0-ios -bl
You are using a preview version of .NET. See: https://aka.ms/dotnet-support-policy
  MauiBuildTime net9.0-ios succeeded (788.8s) → bin/Release/net9.0-ios/iossimulator-arm64/MauiBuildTime.dll

Build succeeded in 789.0s

Publish

dotnet publish -c release -r ios-arm64 -f net9.0-ios -bl
You are using a preview version of .NET. See: https://aka.ms/dotnet-support-policy
  MauiBuildTime net9.0-ios succeeded (69.2s) → bin/Release/net9.0-ios/ios-arm64/MauiBuildTime.dll

Build succeeded in 69.4s

[rolfbjarne]

This issue was moved to xamarin/xamarin-macios#21597