notmuch/performance-test
Tomi Ollila b183f2635e test: copyright information updates
Files in test directories had only copyright of a single individual,
of which code was adapted here as a base of the test system.
Since then many Notmuch Developers have contributed to the test
system, which is now acknowledged with a constant string in some
of the test files.

The README file in test directory instructed new files contain a
copyright notice, but that has never been done (and it is also not
needed). To simplify things a bit (and lessen confusion) this
instruction is now removed.

As a side enchangement, all of the 3 entries in the whole source
tree cd'ing to `dirname` of "$0" now uses syntax cd "$(dirname "$0")".
This makes these particular lines work when current working directory
is e.g. /c/Program Files/notmuch/test/.
(Probably it would fail elsewhere, though.)
2016-05-19 07:56:58 -03:00
..
download perf-test: bump version to 0.4, use manifest files 2013-12-10 04:00:38 +08:00
.gitignore perf-test: initial version of memory test infrastructure. 2012-12-25 08:49:24 -04:00
M00-new.sh test: make script exit (1) if it "fails" to source (.) a file 2015-08-07 21:56:39 +02:00
M01-dump-restore.sh test: make script exit (1) if it "fails" to source (.) a file 2015-08-07 21:56:39 +02:00
Makefile test: initial performance testing infrastructure 2012-11-26 08:39:21 -04:00
Makefile.local build: add dataclean 2014-05-28 09:52:10 -03:00
notmuch-memory-test test: copyright information updates 2016-05-19 07:56:58 -03:00
notmuch-time-test test: copyright information updates 2016-05-19 07:56:58 -03:00
perf-test-lib.sh test: make script exit (1) if it "fails" to source (.) a file 2015-08-07 21:56:39 +02:00
README perf-test: initial version of memory test infrastructure. 2012-12-25 08:49:24 -04:00
T00-new.sh test: make script exit (1) if it "fails" to source (.) a file 2015-08-07 21:56:39 +02:00
T01-dump-restore.sh test: make script exit (1) if it "fails" to source (.) a file 2015-08-07 21:56:39 +02:00
T02-tag.sh test: make script exit (1) if it "fails" to source (.) a file 2015-08-07 21:56:39 +02:00
version.sh perf-test: bump version to 0.4, use manifest files 2013-12-10 04:00:38 +08:00

Performance Tests
-----------------

This directory contains two kinds of performance tests: time tests,
and memory tests. The former use gnu time, and the latter use
valgrind.

Pre-requisites
--------------

In addition to having notmuch, you need:

- gpg
- gnu tar
- gnu time (for the time tests)
- xz. Some speedup can be gotten by installing "pixz", but this is
  probably only worthwhile if you are debugging the tests.
- valgrind (for the memory 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 perf-test".
This will run all time and memory tests.  Be aware that the memory
tests are quite time consuming when run on the full corpus, and that
depending on your interests it may be more sensible to run "make
time-test" or "make memory-test".  You can also invoke one of the
scripts notmuch-time-test or notmuch-memory-test or run a more
specific subset of tests by simply invoking one of the executable
scripts in this directory, (such as ./T00-new).  Each test script
supports the following arguments

--small / --medium / --large	Choose corpus size.
--debug				Enable debugging. In particular don't delete
				temporary directories.

When using the make targets, you can pass arguments to all test
scripts by defining the make variable OPTIONS.

Writing tests
-------------

Have a look at "T01-dump-restore" for an example time test and
"M00-new" for an example memory test. In both cases sourcing
"perf-test-lib.sh" is mandatory.

Basics:

- '(time|memory)_start' unpacks the mail corpus and calls notmuch new if it
   cannot find a cache of the appropriate corpus.
- '(time|memory)_run' runs the command under time or valgrind. Currently
  "memory_run" does not support i/o redirection in the command.
- '(time|memory)_done' does the cleanup; comment it out or pass --debug to the
  script to leave the temporary files around.

Utility functions include

- 'add_email_corpus' unpacks a set of messages and tags
- 'cache_database': makes a snapshot of the current database
- 'uncache_database': forces the next '(time|memory)_start' to rebuild the
  database.

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' or 'M' followed by two digits
to specify the order.