[wtp-dev] How do we improve WTP performance?

[Jeffrey Liu <jeffliu@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Team,

The performance tests are running again,
results are available here[1]. So far, there's only one regression, and
a bug has been opened for it. Although there's only one regression, I'm
still concern about the performance of WTP because I've heard comments
about WTP not performaning very well. I believe one of the reasons why
these performance testcases/results do not give us a good picture of how
well WTP is performing is because we don't have enough testcases. Off my
head, I can think of a few common performance issues that we can easily
run into, for example:

1. Memory leak from opening/closing
editors/views/perspectives
2. Slow builders
3. Slow validators
4. Code making tons of internet connections
5. Resouce listeners being added, but
never removed
6. Large files/workspaces

I'm sure there are others..... For some
of these issues, it's very easy to write a performance testcase for, however,
we are just not doing it. Take the "memory leak from opening/closing
an editor" as an example, all we really need is the editor ID, and
the code to open/close the editor is common for all editors. As a start
to improve the performance of WTP, here's what I'm going to propose:

I suggest we establish a set of performance
policies for our code. For example, we can say, each editor must be accompanied
by a testcase that open & close it 100 times, etc... We can create
common abstract testcases that can be reused. We can develop a tool that
verifies whether these policies are met. We can run this tool as part of
every build and post results on the build page. Missing testcases must
be added asap. Hopefully, this will help us achieve better performance
test coverage. Your comments/suggestions/objections are welcomed.

[1] http://apps.eclipse.org/webtools_performance/web/getScenarios.jsp

Thanks,

Jeff Liu