there's a couple places that can be easily converted from using strings to using
string_views instead. gives a slight (~1%) boost to system eval.
# before
nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
Time (mean ± σ): 2.946 s ± 0.026 s [User: 2.655 s, System: 0.209 s]
Range (min … max): 2.905 s … 2.995 s 20 runs
# after
Time (mean ± σ): 2.928 s ± 0.024 s [User: 2.638 s, System: 0.211 s]
Range (min … max): 2.893 s … 2.970 s 20 runs
this avoids one copy from `s` into `str`, and possibly another copy needed to
construct `s` at the call site. lexical_cast is also more efficient in general.
constructing an ostringstream for non-string concats (like integer addition) is
a small constant cost that we can avoid. for string concats we can keep all the
string temporaries we get from coerceToString and concatenate them in one go,
which saves a lot of intermediate temporaries and copies in ostringstream. we
can also avoid copying the concatenated string again by directly allocating it
in GC memory and moving ownership of the concatenated string into the target
value.
saves about 2% on system eval.
before:
Benchmark 1: nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
Time (mean ± σ): 2.837 s ± 0.031 s [User: 2.562 s, System: 0.191 s]
Range (min … max): 2.796 s … 2.892 s 20 runs
after:
Benchmark 1: nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
Time (mean ± σ): 2.790 s ± 0.035 s [User: 2.532 s, System: 0.187 s]
Range (min … max): 2.722 s … 2.836 s 20 runs
The logical implication operator is included in this section but never explained. It might stump new readers with a pretty uncommon operator, and it's never referenced explicitly.
There already existed a smoke test for the link content length,
but it appears that there exists some corruptions pernicious enough
to replace the file content with zeros, and keeping the same length.
--repair-path now goes as far as checking the content of the link,
making it true to its name and actually repairing the path for such
coruption cases.
we don't have to create an ostream sentry object for every character of a JSON
string we write. format a bunch of characters and flush them to the stream all
at once instead.
this doesn't affect small numbers of string characters, but larger numbers of
total JSON string characters written gain a lot. at 1MB of total string written
we gain almost 30%, at 16MB it's almost a factor of 3x. large numbers of JSON
string characters do occur naturally in a nixos system evaluation to generate
documentation (though this is now somewhat mitigated by caching the largest part
of nixos option docs).
benchmarked with
hyperfine 'nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) {e})"' --warmup 1 -L e 1,4,256,4096,65536
before:
Benchmark 1: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 1)"
Time (mean ± σ): 12.5 ms ± 0.2 ms [User: 9.2 ms, System: 4.0 ms]
Range (min … max): 11.9 ms … 13.1 ms 223 runs
Benchmark 2: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 4)"
Time (mean ± σ): 12.5 ms ± 0.2 ms [User: 9.3 ms, System: 3.8 ms]
Range (min … max): 11.9 ms … 13.2 ms 220 runs
Benchmark 3: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 256)"
Time (mean ± σ): 13.2 ms ± 0.3 ms [User: 9.8 ms, System: 4.0 ms]
Range (min … max): 12.6 ms … 14.3 ms 205 runs
Benchmark 4: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 4096)"
Time (mean ± σ): 24.0 ms ± 0.4 ms [User: 19.4 ms, System: 5.2 ms]
Range (min … max): 22.7 ms … 25.8 ms 119 runs
Benchmark 5: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 65536)"
Time (mean ± σ): 196.0 ms ± 3.7 ms [User: 171.2 ms, System: 25.8 ms]
Range (min … max): 190.6 ms … 201.5 ms 14 runs
after:
Benchmark 1: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 1)"
Time (mean ± σ): 12.4 ms ± 0.3 ms [User: 9.1 ms, System: 4.0 ms]
Range (min … max): 11.7 ms … 13.3 ms 204 runs
Benchmark 2: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 4)"
Time (mean ± σ): 12.4 ms ± 0.2 ms [User: 9.2 ms, System: 3.9 ms]
Range (min … max): 11.8 ms … 13.0 ms 214 runs
Benchmark 3: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 256)"
Time (mean ± σ): 12.6 ms ± 0.2 ms [User: 9.5 ms, System: 3.8 ms]
Range (min … max): 12.1 ms … 13.3 ms 209 runs
Benchmark 4: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 4096)"
Time (mean ± σ): 15.9 ms ± 0.2 ms [User: 11.4 ms, System: 5.1 ms]
Range (min … max): 15.2 ms … 16.4 ms 171 runs
Benchmark 5: nix eval --raw --expr "let s = __concatStringsSep \"\" (__genList (_: \"c\") 256); in __toJSON (__genList (_: s) 65536)"
Time (mean ± σ): 69.0 ms ± 0.9 ms [User: 44.3 ms, System: 25.3 ms]
Range (min … max): 67.2 ms … 70.9 ms 42 runs
Previously you had to remember to call value->attrs->sort() after
populating value->attrs. Now there is a BindingsBuilder helper that
wraps Bindings and ensures that sort() is called before you can use
it.
nixpkgs can save a good bit of eval memory with this primop. zipAttrsWith is
used quite a bit around nixpkgs (eg in the form of recursiveUpdate), but the
most costly application for this primop is in the module system. it improves
the implementation of zipAttrsWith from nixpkgs by not checking an attribute
multiple times if it occurs more than once in the input list, allocates less
values and set elements, and just avoids many a temporary object in general.
nixpkgs has a more generic version of this operation, zipAttrsWithNames, but
this version is only used once so isn't suitable for being the base of a new
primop. if it were to be used more we should add a second primop instead.
Lily Foster