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POE-Devel-Benchmarker-0.05
River stage one • 1 direct dependent • 1 total dependent
/ POE::Devel::Benchmarker

NAME

POE::Devel::Benchmarker - Benchmarking POE's performance ( acts more like a smoker )

SYNOPSIS

apoc@apoc-x300:~$ cd poe-benchmarker
apoc@apoc-x300:~/poe-benchmarker$ perl -MPOE::Devel::Benchmarker -e 'benchmark()'

ABSTRACT

This package of tools is designed to benchmark POE's performace across different configurations. The current "tests" are:

Events

posts: This tests how long it takes to post() N times

dispatches: This tests how long it took to dispatch/deliver all the posts enqueued in the "posts" test

single_posts: This tests how long it took to yield() between 2 states for N times

calls: This tests how long it took to call() N times

Alarms

alarms: This tests how long it took to add N alarms via alarm(), overwriting each other

alarm_adds: This tests how long it took to add N alarms via alarm_add()

alarm_clears: This tests how long it took to clear all alarms set in the "alarm_adds" test

NOTE: alarm_add is not available on all versions of POE!

Sessions

session_creates: This tests how long it took to create N sessions

session_destroys: This tests how long it took to destroy all sessions created in the "session_creates" test

Filehandles

select_read_STDIN: This tests how long it took to toggle select_read N times on STDIN

select_write_STDIN: This tests how long it took to toggle select_write N times on STDIN

select_read_MYFH: This tests how long it took to toggle select_read N times on a real filehandle

select_write_MYFH: This tests how long it took to toggle select_write N times on a real filehandle

NOTE: The MYFH tests don't include the time it took to open()/close() the file :)

Sockets

socket_connects: This tests how long it took to connect+disconnect to a SocketFactory server via localhost

socket_stream: This tests how long it took to send N chunks of data in a "ping-pong" fashion between the server and client

POE startup time

startups: This tests how long it took to start + close N instances of POE+Loop without any sessions/etc via system()

POE Loops

This is actually a "super" test where all of the specific tests is ran against various POE::Loop::XYZ/FOO for comparison

NOTE: Not all versions of POE support all Loops!

POE Assertions

This is actually a "super" test where all of the specific tests is ran against POE with/without assertions enabled

NOTE: Not all versions of POE support assertions!

POE::XS::Queue::Array

This is actually a "super" test where all of the specific tests is ran against POE with XS goodness enabled/disabled

NOTE: Not all versions of POE support XS::Queue::Array!

DESCRIPTION

This module is poorly documented now. Please give me some time to properly document it over time :)

INSTALLATION

Here's a simple outline to get you up to speed quickly. ( and smoking! )

Install CPAN package + dependencies

Download+install the POE::Devel::Benchmarker package from CPAN

apoc@apoc-x300:~$ cpanp -i POE::Devel::Benchmarker
Setup initial directories

Go anywhere, and create the "parent" directory where you'll be storing test results + stuff. For this example, I have chosen to use ~/poe-benchmarker:

apoc@apoc-x300:~$ mkdir poe-benchmarker
apoc@apoc-x300:~$ cd poe-benchmarker
apoc@apoc-x300:~/poe-benchmarker$ mkdir poedists results images
apoc@apoc-x300:~/poe-benchmarker$ perl -MPOE::Devel::Benchmarker::GetPOEdists -e 'getPOEdists( 1 )'

( go get a coffee while it downloads if you're on a slow link, ha! )
Let 'er rip!

At this point you can start running the benchmark!

NOTE: the Benchmarker expects everything to be in the "local" directory!

apoc@apoc-x300:~$ cd poe-benchmarker
apoc@apoc-x300:~/poe-benchmarker$ perl -MPOE::Devel::Benchmarker -e 'benchmark()'

( go sleep or something, this will take a while! )

BENCHMARKING

On startup the Benchmarker will look in the "poedists" directory and load all the distributions it sees untarred there. Once that is done it will begin autoprobing for available POE::Loop packages. Once it determines what's available, it will begin the benchmarks.

As the Benchmarker goes through the combinations of POE + Eventloop + Assertions + XS::Queue it will dump data into the results directory. The module also dumps YAML output in the same place, with the suffix of ".yml"

This module exposes only one subroutine, the benchmark() one. You can pass a hashref to it to set various options. Here is a list of the valid options:

freshstart => boolean

This will tell the Benchmarker to ignore any previous test runs stored in the 'results' directory. This will not delete data from previous runs, only overwrite them. So be careful if you're mixing test runs from different versions!

benchmark( { freshstart => 1 } );

default: false

noxsqueue => boolean

This will tell the Benchmarker to force the unavailability of POE::XS::Queue::Array and skip those tests.

NOTE: The Benchmarker will set this automatically if it cannot load the module!

benchmark( { noxsqueue => 1 } );

default: false

noasserts => boolean

This will tell the Benchmarker to not run the ASSERT tests.

benchmark( { noasserts => 1 } );

default: false

litetests => boolean

This enables the "lite" tests which will not take up too much time.

benchmark( { litetests => 0 } );

default: true

quiet => boolean

This enables quiet mode which will not print anything to the console except for errors.

benchmark( { 'quiet' => 1 } );

default: false

loop => csv list or array

This overrides the built-in loop detection algorithm which searches for all known loops.

There is some "magic" here where you can put a negative sign in front of a loop and we will NOT run that.

NOTE: Capitalization is important!

benchmark( { 'loop' => 'IO_Poll,Select' } );	# runs only IO::Poll and Select
benchmark( { 'loop' => [ qw( Tk Gtk ) ] } );	# runs only Tk and Gtk
benchmark( { 'loop' => '-Tk' } );		# runs all available loops EXCEPT for TK

Known loops: Event_Lib EV Glib Prima Gtk Kqueue Tk Select IO_Poll

poe => csv list or array

This overrides the built-in POE version detection algorithm which pulls the POE versions from the 'poedists' directory.

There is some "magic" here where you can put a negative sign in front of a version and we will NOT run that.

NOTE: The Benchmarker will ignore versions that wasn't found in the directory!

benchmark( { 'poe' => '0.35,1.003' } );			# runs on 0.35 and 1.003
benchmark( { 'poe' => [ qw( 0.3009 0.12 ) ] } );	# runs on 0.3009 and 0.12
benchmark( { 'poe' => '-0.35' } );			# runs ALL tests except 0.35

ANALYZING RESULTS

Please look at the pretty charts generated by the POE::Devel::Benchmarker::Imager module.

EXPORT

Automatically exports the benchmark() subroutine.

TODO

Perl version smoking

We should be able to run the benchmark over different Perl versions. This would require some fiddling with our layout + logic. It's not that urgent because the workaround is to simply execute the benchmarker under a different perl binary. It's smart enough to use $^X to be consistent across tests/subprocesses :)

Select the EV backend
<Khisanth> and if you are benchmarking, try it with POE using EV with EV using Glib? :P
<Apocalypse> I'm not sure how to configure the EV "backend" yet
<Apocalypse> too much docs for me to read hah
<Khisanth> Apocalypse: use EV::Glib; use Glib; use POE; :)
Be smarter in smoking timeouts

Currently we depend on the litetests option and hardcode some values including the timeout. If your machine is incredibly slow, there's a chance that it could timeout unnecessarily. Please look at the outputs and check to see if there are unusual failures, and inform me.

Also, some loops perform badly and take almost forever! /me glares at Gtk...

More benchmarks!

As usual, me and the crowd in #poe have plenty of ideas for tests. We'll be adding them over time, but if you have an idea please drop me a line and let me know!

dngor said there was some benchmarks in the POE svn under trunk/queue...

Tapout contributed a script that tests HTTP performance, let's see if it deserves to be in the suite :)

I added the preliminary socket tests, we definitely should expand it seeing how many people use POE for networking...

Add SQLite/DBI/etc support to the Analyzer

It would be nice if we could have a local SQLite db to dump our stats into. This would make arbitrary reports much easier than loading raw YAML files and trying to make sense of them, ha! Also, this means somebody can do the smoking and send the SQLite db to another person to generate the graphs, cool!

Kqueue loop support

As I don't have access to a *BSD box, I cannot really test this. Furthermore, it isn't clear on how I can force/unload this module from POE...

Wx loop support

I have Wx installed, but it doesn't work. Obviously I don't know how to use Wx ;)

If you have experience, please drop me a line on how to do the "right" thing to get Wx loaded under POE. Here's the error:

Can't call method "MainLoop" on an undefined value at /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/POE/Loop/Wx.pm line 91.
XS::Loop support

The POE::XS::Loop::* modules theoretically could be tested too. However, they will only work in POE >= 1.003! This renders the concept somewhat moot. Maybe, after POE has progressed some versions we can implement this...

SEE ALSO

POE

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc POE::Devel::Benchmarker

Websites

Bugs

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-poe-devel-benchmarker at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=POE-Devel-Benchmarker. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

AUTHOR

Apocalypse <apocal@cpan.org>

BIG THANKS goes to Rocco Caputo <rcaputo@cpan.org> for the first benchmarks!

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2009 by Apocalypse

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.