Regression testing (was Re: Performance issue)

[Petri Helenius]

This sounds somewhat similar to Solaris dtrace stuff?

Pete


Bakul Shah wrote:

>This thread makes me wonder if there is value in runing
>performance tests on a regular basis.  This would give an
>early warning of any peformance loss and can be a useful
>forensic tool (one can pinpoint when some performance curve
>changed discontinuously even though at the time of change it
>may be too small to be noticed).  Over a period of time
>one can gain a view of how the performance evolves.
>
>This would not be a single metric but a set of low and high
>level measures: such as syscall overhead, interrupt overhead,
>specific h/w devices, disk and fs performance for various
>filesystems and file sizes, networking data and pkt
>throughput, routing performance, VM, other subsystems, effect
>of SMP, various threading libraries, scaling with number of
>users/programs/cpus/memory, typical applications under normal
>and stressed loads, compile time for the system and kernel
>etc. etc. etc.
>
>The setup would allow for easy addition of new benchmarks
>(the only way anything like this can be bootstrapped).  Of
>course, one would need to record disk/processor/memory speed
>and capacities + kernel config options, system build tools
>and their options to interpret the results as best as
>possible.  For the results to be useful the setup has to
>remain as stable as possible for a long time.
>
>[While I am dreaming...] A follow on project would be to
>create visualization tools -- mainly graphing and comparing
>graphs.  It would be neat if one can click on a performance
>graph to zoom in or see commits made during some selected
>period.
>
>Such a detailed look, combined with profiling can help people
>focus on specific hotspots & feel good about any improvements
>they are making.  This can be a great way to rope in new
>people;-)
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