[webkit-dev] Adding archive.org-based page loading time performance tests

[Ryosuke Niwa]

*Summary*
I propose to add a new page load time performance test suite that loads
pages on archive.org.

*Problem*
Google's page cycler and Apple's PLT test suites are both private due to
copyright restrictions, and people outside of these two organizations
cannot see the contents. This severely limits the utility and the
effectiveness of these test suites because not all contributors can run
them locally. We need a publicly distributable version of these two test
suites.

*Proposal*
We can measure the performance metrics on the snapshots of popular websites
at a specific date and time on archive.org. Because archive.org will give
us the same snapshot each time for given a URL, our test suite only need to
store a list of URLs. It eliminates the need for distributing the page
contents with the suite and still allows all contributors to obtain the
same test page when running the test suite. In order to avoid DoS'ing
archive.org, we can use web-page-replay:
http://code.google.com/p/web-page-replay/ to create persistent cache.
Credit for this novel idea: Greg Simon.

I have posted a work in progress patch on
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84008. In addition, I have notified
the Internet Archive of the proposed plan on April 12th but I haven't
received any responses yet.

Best,
Ryosuke Niwa
Software Engineer
Google Inc.
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