How to make Magento 2 development sites fast?

Question

I turned off all caches and I set deployment mode to development. So my Magento 2 development sites on all machines are very slow compared to Magento 1.x sites.

Is it normal for Magento 2?

What are the server and Magento configurations that we must be using for Magento 2 development sites so that it has maximum speed?

Update:

On mac for local development, I was able to speed up the site by disabling opcache since there was configuration issue.

Install Redis to replace backend file cache. And use memcache for php sessions. Enable cache and disable the cache sections that you don't want enabled when working on a particular task. If you're styling the theme only, use grunt watch and enable all cache. How to configure is in magento 2 official documentation. — Daniel Ifrim, May 31 '16 at 21:01
I am also suffering from slow development on local window PC. According to your experience, it would be better for me i start local development in Ubuntu or Linux Mint? and what configuration you recommend ? — Jarnail S, Dec 06 '16 at 11:15

Claudiu Creanga · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-12T09:01:13.510

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You can use this vagrant box https://github.com/EcomDev/fast-hypernode.

I use it and it is quite fast. In developer mode with cache disabled and xdebug a page refresh is about 2-3 seconds.

Or you can use the vagrant box provided by magestead: http://www.magestead.com/

use php7.
use gulp for generating css and js (faster than grunt). You can try the already built configuration by snowdog (ready in 2 minutes): https://github.com/SnowdogApps/magento2-frontools
use 3gb of ram if doing testing.
disable only the cache that you need. If you're doing frontend you don't need to disable any cache.
use livereload or browsersync for frontend development so that you don't need to reload pages.

Understand what magento commands do and when to run them. If you're running a lot of setup:static-content:deploy then you'll go mad seeing those dots. Grunt or gulp don't know about @magento_import so that's why when you add or remove files you need to run dev:source-theme:deploy which is much faster than the above one.

What doesn't improve:

Unless you have over 100k products redis makes no difference so don't bother (http://www.developers-paradise.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/05-Yaroslav-Rogoza-Magento-2-performance-comparison-in-different-environments.pdf).

Currently because of how magento2 uses requirejs (2mb of js), http2 makes no difference either.

edited Sep 12 '16 at 09:01

answered Jun 04 '16 at 21:02

Claudiu Creanga

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I am also suffering from slow development on local window PC. According to your experience, it would be better for me i start local development in Ubuntu or Linux Mint? and what configuration you recommend ? – Jarnail S Dec 06 '16 at 11:15
@Jai sorry, don't have experience with Mint. I use mac and ubuntu. – Claudiu Creanga Dec 06 '16 at 11:47
Sir...Can i expect good development speed of magento 2...if i use Vagrant on my window 7 ( i5+12Gb Ram) Or should i go to ubuntu with this system configuration because window is frustrating slow in development – Jarnail S Dec 06 '16 at 12:11
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@Jai Windows is ok. You should aim for 2-3 seconds refresh in developer mode with some of the caches on. check how fast is this one https://github.com/alankent/docker-gsd on your computer and aim for that speed. for vagrant I recommend hypernode https://packagist.org/packages/byteinternet/hypernode-vagrant – Claudiu Creanga Dec 06 '16 at 13:54
Thanks for your suggestion. I will implement your recommendation and do you feel magento development can be done fast in ubuntu and Mac as compare to windows? – Jarnail S Dec 07 '16 at 04:02
@Jai I don't think the OS plays a noticeable role. the thing is, no matter how much you tweak it, I still think the development is a bit slower than mangeto1 – Claudiu Creanga Dec 07 '16 at 09:28
@ClaudiuCreanga Magento also needs a lot of core power in development mode. if you are using php-fpm set up your max workers to your core count (default is limited to 5). Thx for the hints ;D – ZFNerd May 16 '18 at 08:30
how i can use/install it in ubuntu ? – Hamendra Sunthwal Feb 27 '21 at 06:17

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 16 '16 at 03:14

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Depending on what type of development you plan on doing you might find switching to client side css compilation improves a development sites speed significantly

Stores > Configuration > Advanced > Developer > Front-end development workflow

Switch to Client side less compilation

answered Dec 16 '16 at 03:14

bjornredemption

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This setting seems to have moved in Magento 2.2. Any pointers on where to find it now? – fritzmg Dec 20 '17 at 16:58
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http://docs.magento.com/m2/ee/user_guide/system/frontend-development-workflow.html I would check if your site is in Developer mode as its not visible if not – bjornredemption Dec 22 '17 at 00:23
Yeah it was not in developer mode, thx :) – fritzmg Dec 22 '17 at 08:53

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 25 '19 at 11:17

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Opcache give an important boost to performance, just don't forgot to enable timestamp validation to avoid refreshing cache when modifying files

opcache.validate_timestamps = On

answered Nov 25 '19 at 11:17

Choussamaster

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Good addition. In production, I tend to turn off this setting though: It makes performance faster, even though you will need to find an (automated) way to refresh the OPCache again. – Jisse Reitsma Feb 23 '21 at 07:48

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:30

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Also make sure merge of JS / CSS are disabled when in developer mode this really hits performance, testing shows speeds can drop from 20-30 seconds down to 2 - 3 seconds.

May seem obvious to do this in developer mode but if missed can lead to an incredibly slow environment as i had copied a production environment down to develop on and missed this for a while.

Update

This seems to be an issue that was effecting me in 2.1.7 to 2.1.9 and seems to be fixed within Magento 2.2.X

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:30

Community

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answered Aug 24 '17 at 12:04

harri

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this info seems wrong. Speed should not drop with merge – ladle3000 Apr 06 '18 at 01:15
https://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/161337/magento-2-slow-in-developer-mode-with-js-css-merge-minimize-bundling-configur https://github.com/magento/magento2/issues/4321 – harri Apr 06 '18 at 07:26
@ladle3000 Also you wouldn't really want to merge and minify in development just makes it harder to see what files need to be changed for CSS / JS modifications anyway. – harri Apr 06 '18 at 07:29
I see your points. I think perhaps because I migrated directly to 2.2 I never faced this. What version you on? – ladle3000 Apr 06 '18 at 07:57
This may be fixed now in 2.2.0 but just seems like an extra step. I tried to test this morning but when i enable in developer mode it seems to still be disabled? Im on 2.2.3 now – harri Apr 06 '18 at 08:00
But yeah this was a massive slow down in 2.1.7 - 2.1.9 i guess as that is where i was when i mentioned this. 10 times quicker with it turned off so i thought i would mention it here and save a few headaches. – harri Apr 06 '18 at 08:02
Does it actually work for you in developer mode in 2.2? I turn mine on and they are still unmerged. – harri Apr 06 '18 at 08:07

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 30 '19 at 11:56

The main reason why magento2 is slow in developer mode is related to thousand of static and compiled files generated on the fly.

There are 3 solutions for this:

Mount whole directory with NFS (SSD is still mandatory).
Mount only app directory (whoever your hardware it will work fine) but you lose access to /vendor directory on your host machine.
Mount whole project with rsync and exclude directories where files are generated (pub/static, generated/code etc...).

You can give it a try here: https://github.com/zepgram/magento2-fast-vm/

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 25 '19 at 11:54

If you are on Windows try this stack it is very fast: https://winnmp.wtriple.com/ using nginx and php-fpm and enable Zend Opcache

And for caches you can leave them all on but use this file watcher which auto flushes only the caches needed: https://github.com/mage2tv/magento-cache-clean

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 13 '20 at 23:41

I have created a gulpfile to improve the speed development process. https://github.com/magenio-it/magento2-gulp

if you don't need any special tools it should be fine and you can try the "superwatch" task that I created to avoid running an exec command with each new file added :)

score -2 · Answer 8 · answered May 03 '19 at 13:10

-2

Disable the following caches so you don't need to run the CLI commands to clear cache.

CONFIG
LAYOUT_GENERAL_CACHE_TAG
BLOCK_HTML
FPC

answered May 03 '19 at 13:10

ItsJhonny

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This destroys performance. The original topic was how to make things fast, not slow. Use the Mage2TV cache cleaner if you find refreshing caching manually annoying. – Jisse Reitsma Feb 23 '21 at 07:47
@JisseReitsma - Nice tip. Thank you – ItsJhonny Feb 23 '21 at 18:32

score -5 · Answer 9 · edited Jan 11 '18 at 08:43

-5

To boost the speed of Magento 2 store, follow these steps:

First Make sure that you have fulfilled all the system and server requirements.
Update the Magento to its latest version.
Enabled the Varnish Cache
Enabled the Flat Categories and Products -Optimize Image, Javascript and CSS
Set Up CDN
Always use bug-free extensions and lightweight theme.

edited Jan 11 '18 at 08:43

Marius

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answered Jun 16 '17 at 07:32

Syed Muneeb Ul Hasan

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How to make Magento 2 development sites fast?

9 Answers9

Update