'Virtual range for PCH exceeded' issue - after Visual Studio 2019 Upgrade to 16.7.6

mwallner 6 Reputation points
2020-11-12T13:01:58.473+00:00

After we've upgraded from VS2019 16.6 to VS2019 16.7.6, we're sometimes getting the infamous C3859 error when compiling our MSVC solutions.

We're using x64 msbuild from the command line.
/maxcpucount for MSBuild is fixed to '4'
/MP is passed, we're compiling on 8-core i7 machines.
The exact same source occasionally fails to compile with the errors

  • Compiler Error C3859 "virtual memory range for PCH exceeded"
  • System Code 1455 "The paging file is too small for this operation to complete."
  • Fatal error C1076 "compiler limit : internal heap limit reached"

The generated PCHs are up to 300MB in size. Passing the '/Zm' switch (with values up 1000) didn't make a difference.

We've had issues with this years ago, using VS2010 - back then setting '/Zm200' solved the problem for us (note the error codes back then explicitly told us to increase to '/Zm150' or higher).

'reducing the complexity and size of our PCH files' really is not what we want to do - as we're intentionally sacrificing on memory in order to speed up our builds.

I'm wondering if there is a way to figure out what the actual underlying problem is that generates these sporadic occuring errors - and most important: how to fix it .

see my original post at StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64802010/virtual-range-for-pch-exceeded-issue-after-visual-studio-2019-upgrade-to-16

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  1. Dylan Zhu-MSFT 6,406 Reputation points
    2020-11-13T03:18:21.95+00:00

    Hi @mwallner ,

    From the document about /ZM, there is a recommended suggestion:

    If the compiler emits the C1076 error message, an accompanying C3859 message specifies the factor argument to use when you recompile by using the /Zm compiler option. This message is only significant when a precompiled header uses #pragma hdrstop. In other cases, it is a spurious error caused by Windows virtual memory pressure issues, and the recommendation to use the /Zm option should be ignored. Instead, consider reducing the number of parallel processes when using the /maxcpucount option to MSBUILD.EXE in conjunction with the /MP option to CL.EXE. For more information, see Precompiled Header (PCH) issues and recommendations.

    Hope it could help you.

    Best Regards,
    Dylan

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