[webkit-dev] Introducing run-perf-tests and Adding Performance Bots

[Ryosuke Niwa]

...and Chromium Mac Release (Perf) has been added to build.webkit.org:
http://build.webkit.org/waterfall?show=Chromium%20Mac%20Release%20(Perf)

See graphs on http://webkit-perf.appspot.com

- Ryosuke

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 3:20 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:

> Hi WebKittens,
>
> *Executive Summary*
>
>    - I've added Tools/Scripts/run-perf-test, try out
>    - Please add --no-timeout and --timeout options to your DRT
>    - Perf-o-matic coming on webkit-perf.appspot.com, a clone of
>    graphs.mozilla.org
>    - Chromium Mac perf bots coming on build.webkit.org
>    - Use PerformanceTests/Parser/resources/runner.js to write new
>    performance tests
>
>
> *Background*
> We have some performance tests in PerformanceTests but they're not ran by
> any bots. In fact, there are no performance bots at all on
> build.webkit.org. While Chromium has perf bots<http://build.chromium.org/p/chromium.perf/console>,
> we can only see progressions and regressions triggered by WebKit changes
> when Chromium gets a WebKit roll (pulling newer version of WebKit), which
> happens only a handful times a day. It doesn't scale to the rate at which
> we're making changes to WebKit and the visibility and the usability of bots
> are not great for non-Chromium WebKit contributors. Furthermore, Chromium
> perf bots will not catch JSC progressions and regressions at all.
>
> *Means to Run Performance Tests*
> I've added Tools/Scripts/run-perf-tests to run PerformanceTests in
> DRT based on the work Ilya Tikhonovsky (loislo) has done for
> run-inspector-perf-tests.py. The script aims to run performance tests
> both locally and on bots similar to the way run-webkit-tests works and
> runs on Mac (WebKit1) and Chromium ports. Please try it out and give me a
> feedback (you can file a bug with "run-perf-tests: " in the summary and cc
> me).
>
> I didn't merge it into run-webkit-tests because performance tests don't
> pass/fail but instead give us some values that fluctuate over time. While
> Chromium takes an approach to hard-code the rage of acceptable values, such
> an approach has a high maintenance cost and prone to problems such as
> having to increase the range periodically as the score slowly degrades over
> time. Also, as you can see on Chromium perf bots<http://build.chromium.org/p/chromium.perf/console>,
> the test results tend to fluctuate a lot so hard-coding a tight range of
> acceptable value is tricky.
>
> Unlike run-webkit-tests, run-perf-tests doesn't generate any HTML or JSON
> files to summarize the results by default since only output you get out of
> performance tests are time took to run tests or scores, which are already
> reported on stdout. The output of run-perf-tests is designed to be
> compatible with Chromium perf bots but we can easily change that to
> something more human friendly if people are so inclined. The script
> optionally generates a JSON file to be used by perf bots.
>
> In order for other ports (e.g. Windows, Qt, GTK, etc...) to support
> run-perf-tests, simply their respective DRT needs to support --no-timeoutoption that disables the watchdog timer. This is necessary as some
> performance tests take a long time to run. Also, we'll appreciate your help
> if you could add --timeout option per
> https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76662 for the code sanity.
>
> *Adding Performance Bots*
> In the next couple of days, I'm going to post a patch to add a Chromium
> Mac Perf bot to build.webkit.org (of course, upon appropriate reviews)
> that runs run-perf-tests and uploads a JSON file to
> webkit-perf.appspot.com, a clone of graphs.mozilla.org.
>
> While we could have adopted Chromium's perf bot output where each slave
> generates a JSON file with a html front end that loads the JSON, the
> approach didn't scale well for Chromium when the number of historical
> values stored on each slave soared and the size of JSON increased
> proportionally over time. Furthermore, it's hard to compare values between
> different bots or tests. On the other hand, creating a new front end seemed
> like a too much work. As such, I've decided to port Mozilla's Graph Server<https://github.com/mozilla/graphs>to WebKit after consulting with tony^work, ojan, and evmar.
>
> While we could have added another dedicated apache server with all nice
> features Graph Server's native backend provides, the maintenance cost of
> maintaining such a server seemed too high. Also, Robert Helmer (rhelmer), a
> Mozilla contributor who is actively working on the Graph Server, told me
> that Mozilla is planning to replace the backend with a key-value database.
> Given these circumstances and some experimentations, I wrote our own
> backend using Google App Engine <http://code.google.com/appengine/> for
> its low maintenance cost and ease of use; note App Engine is already used
> by commit-queue and flakiness dashboard.
>
> My work to port the Graph Server is near completion and I expect it to be
> working in the next couple of days just as I add a Chromium Mac Perf bot.
> If you're interested in adding new perf bots for your port, please contact
> me directly and I'll give you a detailed instruction on what needs to
> happen (it's super trivial but involves giving out or receiving a password).
>
> *How to Write Performance Tests*
> If you're interested in adding more performance tests (you should be!),
> then use
> http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/PerformanceTests/Parser/html-parser.htmlas an example. It uses
> runner.js<http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/PerformanceTests/Parser/resources/runner.js>,
> which automatically aggregates results over multiple runs and outputs the
> results in the preferred format run-perf-tests understands.
>
> Since there hadn't been any script to run performance tests, tests in
> PerformanceTests don't have an uniform output format. As a result,
> run-perf-tests only supports running tests in Bindings, Parser, and
> inspector at the moment. I'd really appreciate your help if you could
> convert the existing tests to use runner.js to increase the number of
> performance tests run-perf-tests can run or modify run-perf-tests so that
> it can run more tests. Obviously, our goal is to be able to run all tests
> in PerformanceTests by run-perf-tests.
>
> Note Hajime Morita (morrita) has taken initiative on the effort to run
> Dromaeo in DRT <https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76156>.
>
> Best regards,
> Ryosuke Niwa
> Software Engineer
> Google Inc.
>
>
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