Device Performance Degradation with Recent Builds

Firmware
1

Issue Description

I'm experiencing significant performance degradation with builds created recently compared to builds from mid-April. The LCD rendering is noticeably slower, and the binary size has increased from 125KB to 127KB despite no code changes. This affects a Particle P1 device running Device OS 2.0.1.

Environment Details

  • Device: Particle P1
  • Device OS: 2.0.1
  • Particle CLI: Recently updated to 3.35.7 (problem persisted after downgrading)
  • Particle Workbench: Updated to 1.16.37 on April 16, 2025 (problem persisted after downgrading)
  • Build system: Using VS Code Particle Workbench plugin
  • Build scripts: Multiple versions in environment (1.10.0, 1.10.1, 1.15.0)
  • Operating System: macOS 14.6.1

Timeline

  • Last known good build: April 14, 2025
  • Particle Workbench updated: April 16, 2025
  • Particle CLI updated to 3.35.7: Very recently

Video Demonstration

I've created a video showing the performance difference between the older working build and the newer slow build. The video clearly demonstrates the LCD rendering speed difference. You can view it at: (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zCX4_tsuWrjc02RX448JG7XSeh1aaZs8/view?usp=share_link)

Troubleshooting Steps Already Taken

  1. Verified code is identical (using git)
  2. Downgraded Particle CLI to previous version
  3. Downgraded Particle Workbench to previous version
  4. Attempted to force different buildscript versions
  5. Performed clean builds
  6. Tried various Device OS versions (1.0.1, 2.3.1, 3.3.1) - issue persists across all versions
  7. Tried cloud compile instead of local compile

Observed vs Expected Behavior

  • Expected: LCD rendering at normal speed as seen in builds from April 14 and earlier
  • Observed: Noticeably slower LCD rendering, larger binary size with identical code

Questions for Support

  1. What changes in the build system would simultaneously cause performance degradation and increased binary size with identical source code?
  2. Have there been changes to default compiler settings (optimisation flags, debug info, etc.) in recent build tools that would affect performance?
  3. Could recent updates to the build system be implicitly enabling debug mode or reducing optimisation levels?
  4. Are there known issues with the Particle Workbench 1.16.37 update from April 16 affecting build performance?

Additional Information

I'm willing to provide any logs, binary comparisons, or other information that might help diagnose this issue. The performance degradation is consistent across multiple builds with no code changes.

2

I presume you are using third-party libraries. How are you including them?

If you are using local build, presumably you have included them in your lib directory. Did you also remove the library from project.properties? If you did not, then cloud builds will use the version in the cloud, not your local version.

Cloud builds are not changed on new releases. A build pack is built when the version of Device OS is released, and is never touched again. It's a Docker image with that version of Device OS and all of the compiler and other dependencies. Those components are never upgraded. Are you able to reproduce the problem with a CLI build? That just calls the cloud build directly via the Particle CLI.

The Workbench compiler uses the same tool set as cloud builds, but because it's not running in a container it can't be guaranteed to be exactly the same. However, when new versions of Device OS are released and a new toolset (such as compiler version) is upgraded, it will only affect that release and future versions. Building for older versions of Device OS still uses the older toolset.

  1. The build system should never cause a change like that unless you change Device OS versions.
  2. Compiler flags are never updated for previous versions, and Device OS for Gen 2 hasn't been touched since 3.3.1, November 10, 2022. The flags are stored in the Device OS source that you are targeting, not in Workbench.
  3. Cloud build flags never change for previous builds because they are stored in the Device OS source, which is frozen in the build pack Docker image.
  4. No known issue in the Workbench or CLI releases.
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