From: Jeremy Kemper <jeremy@...>
Date: 2005-04-06T02:05:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Benchmarking whole programs

Dick Davies wrote:
> * Berger, Daniel <Daniel.Berger@qwest.com> [0442 17:42]:
>>Another thing you can do is to run your implementation through the
>>profiler.  I also see ruby-prof on the RAA which you could try.
> 
> For those who don't know - 
> Don't use that for a walltime, it slows things right down.

The recently-posted ruby-prof extension by Shugo Maeda is absolutely
wonderful.  Such a simple idea; why did it take so long?  It times and
counts method calls with very low overhead using clock, gettimeofday, or
the CPU timer (on Pentium or PowerPC only).  Unfortunely, it requires
Ruby 1.8 newer than 2005-03-22, which means CVS, or Ruby 1.9 newer than
2005-03-17.

I've seen a couple of other fast Ruby profilers, but they're either
closed-source or Windows-only.  This contribution deserves some hearty
pimping action: go forth and profile with impunity, for it is no longer
intolerably slow.

Thanks Shugo!
jeremy