Codespeed

A web application to monitor and analyze the performance of your code.

Known to be used by PyPy, Twisted, RubySpec and many more.

For an overview of some application concepts see the wiki page

Requirements

You will need Python 2.6+ and Django 1.3+ with South isodate and Tastypie.

In Debian and Ubuntu, they can be installed with:

sudo apt-get install python-django python-django-south python-tastypie

Instead of using distribution packages, you can use pip:

sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

If you want version control integration, there are additional requirements:

• Subversion needs pysvn: python-svn
• Mercurial needs the package mercurial to clone the repo locally
• git needs the git package to clone the repo
• For Github the isodate package is required, but not git: pip install isodate

Note: For git or mercurial repos, the first time the changes view is accessed, Codespeed will try to clone the repo, which depending on the size of the project can take a long time. Please be patient.

Installation

• Download the last stable release from github.com/tobami/codespeed/tags, unpack it and install it with python setup.py install.

• To get started, you can use the sample_project directory as a starting point for your Django project, which can be normally configured by editing sample_project/settings.py.

• For simplicity, you can use the default sqlite configuration, which will save the data to a database named sample_project/data.db

• Create the DB by changing to the sample_project/ directory and running:

    python manage.py syncdb
  

• Create an admin user in the process.

• Migrate to the new DB Schema:

    python manage.py migrate
  

• For testing purposes, you can now start the development server:

    python manage.py runserver 8000
  

The codespeed installation can now be accessed by navigating to http://localhost:8000/.

Note: for production, you should configure a real server like Apache or nginx (refer to the Django docs). You should also modify sample_project/settings.py and set DEBUG = False.

Codespeed configuration

Using the provided test data

If you want to test drive Codespeed, you can use the testdata.json fixtures to have a working data set to browse.

• From the sample_project/ directory, type:

    ./manage.py loaddata ../codespeed/fixtures/testdata.json
  

Starting from scratch

Before you can start saving (and displaying) data, you need to first create an environment and define a default project.

• Go to http://localhost:8000/admin/codespeed/environment/ and create an environment.
• Go to http://localhost:8000/admin/codespeed/project/ and create a project.

Check the field "Track changes" and, in case you want version control integration, configure the relevant fields.

Note: Only executables associated to projects with a checked "track changes" field will be shown in the Changes and Timeline views.

Note: Git and Mercurial need to locally clone the repository. That means that your sample_project/repos directory will need to be owned by the server. In the case of a typical Apache installation, you'll need to type sudo chown www-data:www-data sample_project/repos

Saving data

Data is saved POSTing to http://localhost:8000/result/add/.

You can use the script tools/save_single_result.py as a guide. When saving large quantities of data, it is recommended to use the JSON API instead: http://localhost:8000/result/add/json/

An example script is located at tools/save_multiple_results.py

Note: If the given executable, benchmark, project, or revision do not yet exist, they will be automatically created, together with the actual result entry. The only model which won't be created automatically is the environment. It must always exist or the data won't be saved (that is the reason it is described as a necessary step in the previous "Codespeed configuration" section).

Further customization

Custom Settings

You may override any of the default settings by creating the file sample_project/override/settings.py. It is strongly recommended that you only override the settings you need by importing the default settings and replacing only the values needed for your customizations:

from codespeed.settings import *

DEF_ENVIRONMENT = "Dual Core 64 bits"

Site-wide Changes

All pages inherit from the site_base.html template, which extends base.html. To change every page on the site simply edit (sample_project/templates/site_base.html) which extends base.html and override the appropriate block:

• Custom title: you may replace the default "My Speed Center" for the title block with your prefered value:

    {% block title}
        My Project's Speed Center
    {% endblock %}
  

• Custom logo: Place your logo in sample_project/override/media/img and add a block like this:

    {% block logo %}
        <img src="{{ MEDIA_URL }}override/img/my-logo.png" width="120" height="48" alt="My Project">
    {% endblock logo %}
  

  n.b. the layout will stay exactly the same for any image with a height of 48px (any width will do)

• Custom JavaScript or CSS: add your files to the sample_project/override/media directory and extend the extra_head template block:

    {% block extra_head %}
        {{ block.super }}
        <script type="text/javascript" src="{{ MEDIA_URL }}override/js/my_cool_tweaks.js">
    {% endblock extra_head %}
  

Specific Pages

Since sample_project/override/templates is the first entry in settings.TEMPLATE_DIRS you may override any template on the site simply by creating a new one with the same name.

• About page: create sample_project/override/templates/about.html:

    {% extends "site_base.html" %}
    {% block title %}{{ block.super }}: About this project{% endblock %}
    {% block body %}
        <div id="sidebar"></div>
        <div id="about" class="about_content clearfix">
            Your content here
        </div>
    {% endblock %}
  

Baselines and Comparison view executables

• The results associated to an executable and a revision which has a non blank tag field will be listed as a baseline option in the Timeline view.
• Additionaly, the Comparison view will show the results of the latest revision of projects being tracked as an executable as well.

Defaults

The file sample_project/settings.py can contain customizations of several parameters (the file includes comments with full examples).

General settings:

• WEBSITE_NAME: The RSS results feed will use this parameter as the site name
• DEF_BASELINE: Defines which baseline option will be chosen as default in the Timeline and Changes views.
• DEF_ENVIRONMENT: Defines which environment should be selected as default in the Changes and Timeline views.
• CHANGE_THRESHOLD
• TREND_THRESHOLD

Changes View

• DEF_EXECUTABLE: in the Changes view, a random executable is chosen as default. It that doesn't suite you, you can specify here which one should be selected. You need to specify its id (since the name alone is not unique).

Timeline View

• DEF_BENCHMARK: Defines the default timeline view. Possible values:
  • None: will show a grid of plot thumbnails, or a text message when the number of plots exceeds 30
  • grid: will always show as default the grid of plots
  • show_none: will show a text message (better default when there are lots of benchmarks)
  • mybench: will select benchmark named "mybench"
• DEF_BRANCH: Defines the default branch to be used when calculating timeline and changes data for presentation. Example values:
  • default: the default value, and usually mercurial's default branch
  • master: usually git's default branch
  • trunk: usually SVN's default branch

Comparison View

• CHART_TYPE: Chooses the default chart type (normal bars, stacked bars or relative bars)
• NORMALIZATION: Defines whether normalization should be enabled as default in the Comparison view.
• CHART_ORIENTATION: horizontal or vertical
• COMP_EXECUTABLES: per default all executables will be checked. When there are a large number of tags or executables, it is better to only select a few so that the plots are not too cluttered. Given as a list of tuples containing the name of an executable + commitid of a revision. An 'L' denotes the last revision. Example:

COMP_EXECUTABLES = [
    ('myexe', '21df2423ra'),
    ('myexe', 'L'),
]

Getting help

For help regarding the configuration of Codespeed, or to share any ideas or suggestions you may have, please post on Codespeed's discussion group

Reporting bugs

If you find any bug in Codespeed please report it on the Github issue tracker