cppbench - define C++ benchmarks like in Go

cppbench is a small benchmarking library for C++ that mimics Go's go test -bench. It uses the same benchmarking methodology and thus can be used to compare C++ and Go benchmarks side-by-side and obtain meaningful comparisons.

To compile the included example program run:

$ c++ -std=c++17 -O3 -o bench bench.cc example.cc
$ ./bench

(The equivalent Go benchmark lives in go/example_test.go.)

To define your own benchmark function use the following model, analogous to Go's benchmarking facility:

void BenchmarkFoo(B *b) {
	int N = b->N;
	for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
	   // ... work you need to benchmark ...
	}
}

int main() {
   AutoBench(
	  Bench(BenchmarkFoo),
   );
}

Then compile your program with the enclosed bench.hh and bench.cc.

Beware! C++ compilers tend to be agressive at eliminating dead code and folding loops, much more than the Go compiler. To ensure that the benchmark loops runs for all N iterations, peruse the provided pseudo-functions NOP(i) (inside the loop, on the loop counter) and CONSUME() (at the end, for computed results). See the example usage in example.cc.

Differences with Go's testing.B

The following functionality are supported:

• configuring the number of iterations of the benchmark with the global variable g_count.
• configuring the "chattiness" of the benchmark execution with the global variable g_chatty.
• configuring the benchmark time per iteration with the global variable g_benchTime.
• starting, stopping and resetting the timer with b->StartTimer(). b->StopTimer() and b->ResetTimer().
• running a sub-benchmark with b->Run().

(For the 3 global variables, either set them directly from your main() function, or you will need to define your own command-lin argument handling to customize them on every run.)

The following functionality from Go's benchmarking library are not supported:

• filtering which benchmarks to run (this may be added in the future).
• b.Skip(), b.Error(), b.Fatal() (this may be added in the future).
• timeouts.
• benchmarking memory usage.
• benchmarking allocations.
• b.Parallel().
• other functionality from Go's testing package.

Happy benchmarking!