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 '' 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 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 "" 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.