with position and symbol tables in place we can now shrink Attr by a full
pointer with some simple field reordering. since Attr is a very hot struct this
has substantial impact on memory use, decreasing GC allocations and heap size by
10-15% each. we also get a ~15% performance improvement due to reduced GC
loading.
pure parsing has taken a hit over the branch base because positions are now
slightly more expensive to create, but overall we get a noticeable improvement.
before (on memory-friendliness):
Benchmark 1: nix search --no-eval-cache --offline ../nixpkgs hello
Time (mean ± σ): 6.960 s ± 0.028 s [User: 5.832 s, System: 0.897 s]
Range (min … max): 6.886 s … 7.005 s 20 runs
Benchmark 2: nix eval -f ../nixpkgs/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/hackage-packages.nix
Time (mean ± σ): 328.1 ms ± 1.7 ms [User: 295.8 ms, System: 32.2 ms]
Range (min … max): 324.9 ms … 331.2 ms 20 runs
Benchmark 3: nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
Time (mean ± σ): 2.688 s ± 0.029 s [User: 2.365 s, System: 0.238 s]
Range (min … max): 2.642 s … 2.742 s 20 runs
after:
Benchmark 1: nix search --no-eval-cache --offline ../nixpkgs hello
Time (mean ± σ): 6.902 s ± 0.039 s [User: 5.844 s, System: 0.783 s]
Range (min … max): 6.820 s … 6.956 s 20 runs
Benchmark 2: nix eval -f ../nixpkgs/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/hackage-packages.nix
Time (mean ± σ): 330.7 ms ± 2.2 ms [User: 300.6 ms, System: 30.0 ms]
Range (min … max): 327.5 ms … 334.5 ms 20 runs
Benchmark 3: nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
Time (mean ± σ): 2.330 s ± 0.027 s [User: 2.040 s, System: 0.234 s]
Range (min … max): 2.272 s … 2.383 s 20 runs
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