/perforator

Performance unit testing library for Erlang

Primary LanguageErlang

Perforator

Perforator is a (E)unit-testing style performance testing tool.

Although it can be used as a standalone tool, to unleash it's full power use it with the Perforator CI server. Check it out here:

https://github.com/brb/perforator-ci

Travis-CI :: Build Status

Usage

For enhanced comfort Perforator ships with a rebar plugin, add this baby to your rebar.config:

(Note: the plugin doesn't seem to be working with the newest rebar version, this will be fixed shortly, but in the mean time use version 2.0.0 which is guaranteed to work)

{plugins, [perforator_rebar_plugin]}.
{deps, [
    {perforator, ".*", {git, "https://github.com/yfyf/perforator.git", "master"}}
]}

The testing goes like this:

  • Write some *_perf.erl modules and put them in your tests/ directory.
  • Run `./rebar perf skip_deps=true'
  • Explore the wonderful results written in .perf/

_perf.erl modules

_perf.erl modules are supposed to be very similar (in terms of syntax) to EUnit's test modules.

Test objects can be:

  • simple: test_case_perf() -> timer:sleep(100). functions.
  • EUnit style fixtures: test_generator_perf_() -> {setup, Setup, Cleanup, TestObj}.
  • for more examples check out test/sample_lists_perf.erl module.

Note #1: the _perf_(), _perf() suffixes, they are kind of the same as EUnit's _test() and _test_() ones. The main difference between EUnit is that you don't need to return a fun everywhere. Note #2: since there are no parse transforms involved, you must export the *_perf[_]() functions! -compile(export_all). is justifiable here.

Notes on test runs and statistics

Each test case is being run 5 times with 500ms sleeps (it's hardcoded for now, sorry!) and averages are being calculated for the statistics to be more meaningful.

Some of the statistics gathered are rather sloppy, but at least the duration is tracked pretty tightly.