We have noticed that component publishing takes a long time.
The component we are trying to publish has pdf’s and jpg’s in it. It also has links to other components.
Looking at the logs we found that publisher is trying to publish multimedia items from the component and also MM components from the linked components. The linked components have more linked components.
Some components publish after a long time and some fail throwing memory exception.
Is this a bug in Tridion? Has anyone ran into this issue before?
This is by design, if you want to prevent SDL Tridion resolving these additional items, you will need to modify the instructions that are sent to the Publisher. If you are using SDL Tridion 2009 or earlier, you will need to do this using an event system. If you are on version 2011 or greater, you can take advantage of the new Custom Resolvers. Perhaps you can specify which version you are using.
If you are on 2011, take a look at this article on Custom Resolvers: http://www.tridiondeveloper.com/a-custom-resolver-in-practice
If you are on 2009, you may find this Event sample handy