notmuch/performance-test/README
David Bremner 047cd7a595 perf-test: rename current tests as "time tests"
This is almost entirely renaming files, except for updating a few
references to those file names, and changing the makefile target.

A new set of memory tests will be run separately because they take
much longer.
2012-12-25 08:49:24 -04:00

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Pre-requisites
--------------
In addition to having notmuch, you need:
- gpg
- gnu tar
- gnu time
- xz. Some speedup can be gotten by installing "pixz", but this is
probably only worthwhile if you are debugging the tests.
Getting set up to run tests:
----------------------------
First, you need to get the corpus. If you don't already have the gpg
key for David Bremner, run
% gpg --search 'david@tethera.net'
This should get you a key with fingerprint
815B 6398 2A79 F8E7 C727 86C4 762B 57BB 7842 06AD
(the last 8 digits are printed as the "key id").
To fetch the actual corpus it should work to run
% make download-corpus
In case that fails or is too slow, check
http://notmuchmail.org/corpus
for a list of mirrors.
Running tests
-------------
The easiest way to run performance tests is to say "make time-test", (or
simply run the notmuch-time-test script). Either command will run all
available performance tests.
Alternately, you can run a specific subset of tests by simply invoking
one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./basic).
Each test script supports the following arguments
--small / --medium / --large Choose corpus size.
--debug Enable debugging. In particular don't delete
temporary directories.
Writing tests
-------------
Have a look at "T01-dump-restore" for an example. Sourcing
"perf-test-lib.sh" is mandatory. Utility functions include
- 'add_email_corpus' unpacks a set of messages and adds them to the database.
- 'cache_database': makes a snapshot of the current database
- 'uncache_database': forces the next 'add_email_corpus' to rebuild the
database.
- 'time_start' unpacks the mail corpus and calls notmuch new if it
cannot find a cache of the appropriate corpus.
- 'time_done' does the cleanup; comment it out or pass --debug to the
script to leave the temporary files around.
Scripts are run in the order specified in notmuch-perf-test. In the
future this order might be chosen automatically so please follow the
convention of starting the name with 'T' followed by two digits to
specify the order.