Empty compiler error

[sebas77]

Ok so...this plugin works, however sometimes it doesn't. For some reason that I cannot still explain, often it ends up with this issue:

it's quite frustrating, because then restarting the editor has the chance to fix it. However, some times, the only way to fix it is to delete the plugin files.

Unity 5.3.6

[Zireael07]

I was experiencing this too.

[veblush]

Could you give me a log files and any clue? I don't have any idea about this problem. 😢

[SugoiDev]

I experienced that quite a few times as well. Currently on 5.4.0p4. Pretty sure I was getting this since the first time I used the Incremental Compiler (around the time of release).

I got nothing in the logs nor anywhere.
So far, the only way I got it to compile again is to restart the editor.

My hunch is that this is somehow related to

• having a specific kind of error in the code (I think something that Unity serializes)
• Unity trying to compile and get caught in some deadlock.

I say this because Unity often forced me to reset the layout when I re-opened it. Then, usually, it would show that the code is not compiling due to some error.
But, simply having code with errors isn't enough to trigger this.
I can't say I really tried to reproduce every time, since I would often be very focused on the code itself (and with a very sweaty brow).

It seems this one is a strong candidate for a heisenbug!

[00christian00]

I think I may have found the issue. I couldn't get it to work anymore and after the thousandth time I killed Unity I noticed there were a lot of mono.exe process spawned. I killed them all and it restarted working again.
How are you looking up for the server executable? Maybe it is connecting to a frozen server and ignoring the newly spawned that is working.

[veblush]

@00christian00 Could you give me log files? I've just read server spawning code of incremental compiler but I don't have a clue yet.
Also after unity terminates, all compiler server processes should be terminated. Are they still running even after unity stops?

[00christian00]

I don't think I have anymore, but there wasn't anything. The last line was build all, if I remember correctly.
I didn't notice multiple instances of Incremental compiler.exe but mono.exe is still there and it spawn a new one after each time Unity start. If you run some code on Unity close it cannot run, since it freeze on compilation and you must kill Unity to close it.
Also maybe it's another clue, when it wasn't working anymore I tried another project with the compiler assets, and the compiler window did show up since it didn't have to compile anything and it wasn't reporting the server status, the kill button wasn't there. It definitively couldn't talk to the server, then as I tried to compile it frozen as the other project.

[L0g1k]

I still get this; it might be related to the special Unity folders. When I force a recompile of Standard Assets (I put an empty comment in some file in this directory) then the phantom error goes away.