What is IDECacheDeleteAppExtension process for?

CacheDelete is a subsystem within macOS that cleans up disk space in response to high-level demand for that space. It’s the back end to the very-rarely-used

CSDiskSpaceStartRecovery

API. CacheDelete has a plug-in mechanism whereby various system components can plug in to recover disk space associated with that component. It looks like Xcode ships with an app extension that implements such a plug-in:

$ find /Applications/Xcode.app -name IDECacheDeleteAppExtension.appex
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/PlugIns/IDECacheDeleteAppExtension.appex

IMPORTANT While

CSDiskSpaceStartRecovery

is public API, this plug-in mechanism is not.

I don’t know why this plug-in would be burning through CPU but the general strategy for things like this is:

• file a bug containing a

  sysdiagnose

  log

• run

  sample

  and

  fs_usage

  against the offending process to see if you can spot any obvious cause

Please post your bug number here, just for the record.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

Same problem here. Deleting the Xcode cache file helps.

rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

The following is the error log in console:

default
22:07:48.613380 +0800
IDECacheDeleteAppExtension
DVTCacheDelete: Failed to read mod date for:
/***/***/***.xcodeproj
Error: (null)

Thanks @forkon and @eskimo - I followed forkon's advice and checked the system log and found lots of messages about the xcode cache that I have removed and now everything seems fine. If/when this comes back I will take Eskimo's adivce and file the radar.

My errors were pointing to something in /Applications/Xcode.app, so I just deleted Xcode.