Bazel Performance Benchmarking

Status: WIP

Setup

Pre-requisites: git and bazel.

# Clone bazel-bench.
$ git clone https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-bench.git
$ cd bazel-bench

To do a test run, run the following command (if you're on Windows, populate --data_directory with an appropriate Windows-style path):

$ bazel run :benchmark \
-- \
--bazel_commits=b8468a6b68a405e1a5767894426d3ea9a1a2f22f,ad503849e78b98d762f03168de5a336904280150 \
--project_source=https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_cc.git \
--data_directory=/tmp/bazel-bench-data \
--verbose \
-- build //:all

The Bazel commits might be too old and no longer buildable by your local Bazel. Replace them with the more recent commits from bazelbuild/bazel. The above command would print a result table on the terminal and outputs a csv file to the specified --data_directory.

Syntax

Bazel-bench has the following syntax:

$ bazel run :benchmark -- <bazel-bench-flags> -- <args to pass to bazel binary>

For example, to benchmark the performance of 2 bazel commits A and B on the same command bazel build --nobuild //:all of rules_cc project, you'd do:

$ bazel run :benchmark \
-- \
--bazel_commits=A,B \
--project_source=https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_cc.git \
-- build --nobuild //:all

Note the double-dash -- before the command arguments. You can pass any arguments that you would normally run on Bazel to the script. The performance of commands other than build can also be benchmarked e.g. query, ...

Config-file Interface

The flag-based approach does not support cases where the benchmarked Bazel commands differ. The most common use case for this: As a rule developer, I want to verify the effect of my flag on Bazel performance. For that, we'd need the config-file interface. The example config file would look like this:

# config.yaml
global_options:
  project_commit: 595a730
  runs: 5
  collect_profile: false
  project_source: /path/to/project/repo
units:
 - bazel_binary: /usr/bin/bazel
   command: --startup_option1 build --nomy_flag //:all
 - bazel_binary: /usr/bin/bazel
   command: --startup_option2 build --my_flag //:all

To launch the benchmark:

$ bazel run :benchmark -- --benchmark_config=/absolute/path/to/config.yaml

The above config file would benchmark 2 "units". A unit is defined as a set of conditions that describes a scenario to be benchmarked. This setup allows maximum flexibility, as the conditions are independent between units. It's even possible to benchmark a bazel_commit against a pre-built bazel_binary.

global_options is the list of options applied to every units. These global options are overridden by local options.

For the list of currently supported flags/attributes and their default values, refer to utils/benchmark_config.py.

Known Limitations:

• project_source should be a global option, as we don't support benchmarking multiple projects in 1 benchmark. Though, project_commit can differ between units.
• Incremental benchmarks isn't available.
• Commands have to be in canonical form (next section).

Bazel Arguments Interpretation

Bazel arguments are parsed manually. It is important that the supplied arguments in the command line strictly follows the canonical form:

<command> <canonical options> <expressions>

Example of non-canonical command line arguments that could result in wrong interpretation:

GOOD: (correct order, options in canonical form)
  build --nobuild --compilation_mode=opt //:all

BAD: (non-canonical options)
  build --nobuild -c opt //:all

BAD: (wrong order)
  build --nobuild //:all --compilation_mode=opt

Available flags

To show all the available flags:

$ bazel run :benchmark -- --helpshort

Some useful flags are:

  --bazel_binaries: The pre-built bazel binaries to benchmark.
    (a comma separated list)
  --bazel_commits: The commits at which bazel is built.
    (default: 'latest')
    (a comma separated list)
  --bazel_source: Either a path to the local Bazel repo or a https url to a GitHub repository.
    (default: 'https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel.git')
  --bazelrc: The path to a .bazelrc file.
  --csv_file_name: The name of the output csv, without the .csv extension
  --data_directory: The directory in which the csv files should be stored.
  --[no]prefetch_ext_deps: Whether to do an initial run to pre-fetch external dependencies.
    (default: 'true')
  --project_commits: The commits from the git project to be benchmarked.
    (default: 'latest')
    (a comma separated list)
  --project_source: Either a path to the local git project to be built or a https url to a GitHub repository.
  --runs: The number of benchmark runs.
    (default: '5')
    (an integer)
  --[no]verbose: Whether to include git/Bazel stdout logs.
    (default: 'false')
  --[no]collect_profile: Whether to collect JSON profile for each run.
    Requires --data_directory to be set.
    (default: 'false')

Collecting JSON Profile

Bazel's JSON Profile is a useful tool to investigate the performance of Bazel. You can configure bazel-bench to export these JSON profiles on runs using the --collect_profile flag.

JSON Profile Aggregation

For each pair of project_commit and bazel_commit, we produce a couple JSON profiles, based on the number of runs. To have a better overview of the performance of each phase and events, we can aggregate these profiles and produce the median duration of each event across them.

To run the tool:

bazel run utils:json_profiles_merger \
-- \
--bazel_source=<some commit or path> \
--project_source=<some url or path> \
--project_commit=<some_commit> \
--output_path=/tmp/outfile.csv \
-- /tmp/my_json_profiles_*.profile

You can pass the pattern that selects the input profiles into the positional argument of the script, like in the above example (/tmp/my_json_profiles_*.profile).

Output Directory Layout

By default, bazel-bench will store the measurement results and other required files (project clones, built binaries, ...) under the ~/.bazel-bench directory.

The layout is:

~/.bazel-bench/                         <= The root of bazel-bench's output dir.
  bazel/                                <= Where bazel's repository is cloned.
  bazel-bin/                            <= Where the built bazel binaries are stored.
    fba9a2c87ee9589d72889caf082f1029/   <= The bazel commit hash.
      bazel                             <= The actual bazel binary.
  project-clones/                       <= Where the projects' repositories are cloned.
    7ffd56a6e4cb724ea575aba15733d113/   <= Each project is stored under a project hash,
                                           computed from its source.
  out/                                  <= This is the default output root. But
                                           the output root can also be set via --data_directory.

To clear the caches, simply rm -rf where necessary.

Uploading to BigQuery & Storage

As an important part of our bazel-bench daily pipeline, we upload the csv output files to BigQuery and Storage, using separate targets.

To upload the output to BigQuery & Storage you'll need the GCP credentials and the table details. Please contact [email protected].

BigQuery:

bazel run utils:bigquery_upload \
-- \
--upload_to_bigquery=<project_id>:<dataset_id>:<table_id>:<location> \
-- \
<file1> <file2> ...

Storage:

bazel run utils:storage_upload \
-- \
--upload_to_storage=<project_id>:<bucket_id>:<subdirectory> \
-- \
<file1> <file2> ...

Performance Report

We generate a performance report with BazelCI. The generator script can be found under the /report directory.

Example Usage: $ python3 report/generate_report.py --date=2019-01-01 --project=dummy --storage_bucket=dummy_bucket

For more detailed usage information, run: $ python3 report/generate_report.py --help

Tests

The tests for each module are found in the same directory. To run the test, simply:

$ bazel test ...