What is the GWT byte-cache file?

Question

As a background, today, my GWT hosted mode runs just mysteriously slowed down to the extent that it is virtually not working. Whenever I pause the application the relevant threads (the main thread, the code server, etc.) are waiting on some file I/O native method. After scratching my head for a while I tried to clean up my hard disk a bit. Then I just discovered in my user's Temp folder a 4 gigabyte file named gwt7155307955598297091byte-cache. I wonder what this file may be good for, and what will happen if I delete it completely. Will I have a performance issue the next time I start the dev mode waiting for the "byte-cache" to be recreated?

Amiraamis

Never actually seen byte-cache (gwtc and unit-cache are common things, but byte-cache is something strange). I can only guess, but looks like it is some leftover after gwt compilation/devmode crashed unexpectedly. Back it up, remove, start the dev mode and see what's happens. – Olmos

I deleted it and restarted. Outcome: now I have four of them, gwt1403277329140936076byte-cache, gwt4591349959496363357byte-cache, gwt4958205699974338695byte-cache and gwt6448046695574924624byte-cache. – Amiraamis

Answer 1

Looking at the gwt source code, it says it's "A global shared Disk cache", used by a linker (com.google.gwt.core.ext.linker package) and compiler (com.google.gwt.dev.javac package).

Burgage

How to clean up? When to clean up. For how long it is needed? – Shaneka