[cairo] cairo-perf-trace in graphic performance testing

[Chris Wilson]

Excerpts from Zhaoyj's message of Mon Sep 14 10:48:05 +0100 2009:
> Hi there, 
> 
> I found there when investigating graphic 2d
> performance testing. Carl recommend cairo-perf-trace in his blog
> because it could test real-world applications , and that's what I want.
> After read document in the site, I still have some questions about
> cairo-perf-trace:
> 
> 1. how to generate these trace file of real-world application like
> firefox session?  And I don't think firefox make cairo-based rendering 
> operations.

I hope http://cairographics.org/FAQ/#profiling gives a complete answer.
The concise response is 'cairo-trace firefox' which will
generate a firefox.$pid.trace file. This can then be replayed using
cairo/perf/cairo-perf-trace ./firefox.$pid.trace.

Since firefox-2.0, firefox has been using cairo for rendering its layout
on linux and since firefox-3.0 using cairo on all platforms. (Obviously
there are elements such as <video> and the new 3D extensions that they
do not use cairo for, but pretty much everything else does.)

> 2. Is it feasible use cario-perf-trace as a common benchmark tool in linux
> platform?

Yes. And I'm trying to make it easier. First by making cairo-perf
suitable to be installed alongside the library. At the moment the tool
has a 'developer-centric' focus, namely whoever was using it last
tweaked it to answer their question. So before installing it, I need to
improve usability somewhat and tidy up the myriad of nearly-identical
programs. Secondly, I'm looking at making it easy to integrate
cairo-perf into the phoronix-test-suite, which at the moment is
basically just stalled on making a new snapshot (and before we do that I
want to be sure that cairo/cairo-perf is ready for wider testing.)

In short, checkout cairo and cairo-traces from git and try
cairo-perf-trace. Then tell us how we can improve the tools. Patches are
always welcome. ;-)

I hope you have fun with cairo and cairo-perf-trace!
-ickle
-- 
chris.wilson at intel.com