Hi Mark,

Thanks for posting!

NCrunch does, unfortunately, need to create the workspaces in order to correctly operate. Restarting VS or the engine won't solve this problem for you, as every time you do this it'll just be a matter of time before the concurrency and build needs of the engine will once again overstep the size of your RAM disk.

It's worth being aware that there is a limit to the number of workspaces NCrunch will create - it doesn't just keep going up and up, although disk consumption may vary greatly depending on your solution.

The only way to influence the number of workspaces is indirectly through configuration settings, particularly the 'Max number of processing threads' and 'Process pool size' settings. Setting these options to lower values will reduce the number of workspaces NCrunch requires at any one time, although this may also slow the engine.

Unfortunately there is no feasible way for NCrunch to self-limit the number of workspaces it creates. The problem behind this could in many ways be compared to a process trying to limit its overall memory consumption. NCrunch would not be able to avoid creating new workspaces without greatly inhibiting its own operations at a level that would make use of the product very limited/painful. If you're having problems with disk space running out on the server, there are several options for resolving this:

1. Adjust the 'Max number of processing threads' and 'Process pool size' to lower values so that NCrunch needs less workspaces

2. Look at ways of reducing the disk consumption of each workspace. Check for large files that are being included in the project file or 'Additional files to include' setting that aren't actually needed by NCrunch. Files that are included using 'Additional files to include' at solution level are shared between ALL projects in the solution and can greatly increase disk consumption, so make sure you have nothing included here unless it's absolutely needed.

3. Increase available disk space for the workspace, perhaps consider moving to a physical drive instead of a RAM disk (I know this is probably what you are trying to avoid, but sometimes it's just the easiest option)

Sorry, I was remembering this setting under its old name.. The correct name is 'Max test runners to pool' - http://www.ncrunch.net/documentation/reference_global-configuration_max-test-runners-to-pool.

Yes - it does. I'd recommend turning this setting on.



NCrunch won't remove any workspaces until the engine is shut down or the project related to the workspace is removed/reloaded. Workspaces are fairly expensive to create, so NCrunch will instead prefer to re-use existing workspaces by resynchronising them with your source code changes as necessary.