# Profiling with rustc-perf

The [Rust benchmark suite][rustc-perf] provides a comprehensive way of profiling and benchmarking
the Rust compiler.
You can find instructions on how to use the suite in its [manual][rustc-perf-readme].

However, using the suite manually can be a bit cumbersome.
To make this easier for `rustc` contributors,
the compiler build system (`bootstrap`) also provides built-in integration with the benchmarking suite,
which will download and build the suite for you, build a local compiler toolchain and let you profile it using a simplified command-line interface.

You can use the `./x perf <command> [options]` command to use this integration.

You can use normal bootstrap flags for this command, such as `--stage 1` or `--stage 2`, for example to modify the stage of the created sysroot. It might also be useful to configure `bootstrap.toml` to better support profiling, e.g. set `rust.debuginfo-level = 1` to add source line information to the built compiler.

`x perf` currently supports the following commands:
- `benchmark <id>`: Benchmark the compiler and store the results under the passed `id`.
- `compare <baseline> <modified>`: Compare the benchmark results of two compilers with the two passed `id`s.
- `eprintln`: Just run the compiler and capture its `stderr` output.
  Note that the compiler normally does not print
  anything to `stderr`, so you might want to add some `eprintln!` calls to get any output.
- `samply`: Profile the compiler using the [samply][samply] sampling profiler.
- `cachegrind`: Use [Cachegrind][cachegrind] to generate a detailed simulated trace of the compiler's execution.

> You can find a more detailed description of the profilers in the [`rustc-perf` manual][rustc-perf-readme-profilers].

You can use the following options for the `x perf` command, which mirror the corresponding options of the
`profile_local` and `bench_local` commands that you can use in the suite:

- `--include`: Select benchmarks which should be profiled/benchmarked.
- `--profiles`: Select profiles (`Check`, `Debug`, `Opt`, `Doc`) which should be profiled/benchmarked.
- `--scenarios`: Select scenarios (`Full`, `IncrFull`, `IncrPatched`, `IncrUnchanged`) which should be profiled/benchmarked.

## Example profiling diff for external crates
It can be of interest to generate a local diff for two commits of the compiler for external crates.
To start, in the `rustc-perf` repo, build the collector, which runs the Rust compiler benchmarks as follows.
```
cargo build --release -p collector
```
The collector can then be run using cargo, specifying the collector binary.
It expects the following arguments:
- `<PROFILE>`: Profiler selection for how performance should be measured.
  For this example, we will use Cachegrind.
- `<RUSTC>`: The Rust compiler revision to benchmark, specified as a commit SHA from `rust-lang/rust`.
Optional arguments allow running profiles and scenarios as described above.
More information regarding the mandatory and
optional arguments can be found in the [rustc-perf-readme-profilers].

Then, for the case of generating a profile diff for the crate `serve_derive-1.0.136`, for two commits `<SHA1>` and `<SHA2>` from the `rust-lang/rust` repository,
run the following in the `rustc-perf` repo:
```
cargo run --release --bin collector profile_local cachegrind +<SHA1> --rustc2 +<SHA2> --exact-match serde_derive-1.0.136 --profiles Check --scenarios IncrUnchanged
```


[samply]: https://github.com/mstange/samply
[cachegrind]: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/cmt-40/Nice/RuleRefinement/bin/valgrind-3.2.0/docs/html/cg-manual.html
[rustc-perf]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-perf
[rustc-perf-readme]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-perf/blob/master/collector/README.md
[rustc-perf-readme-profilers]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-perf/blob/master/collector/README.md#profiling-local-builds
