Finding slowdowns in pkg_install (continuations of previous threads)

[Tim Kientzle]

>>    I'm currently running a gamut of tests (500 tests, per package -- 
>> 128 total on my server), and outputting all data to CSV files to 
>> interpret later, using another Perl script to interpret calculated 
>> averages and standard deviations.

Excellent!  Much-needed work.

>>    Using basic printf(2)'s with clock_gettime(2) I have determined 
>> that the majority of the issues are disk-bound (as Tom Kientzle put 
>> it).

Next question:  What are those disk operations and are any
of them redundant?

>> The scope of my problem is not to analyze tar,...

I've spent the last three years+ doing exactly that.
Make sure you're using the newest bsdtar/libarchive,
which has some very noticable performance improvements.

>> but I've 
>> discovered that a lot of time is spent in reading and interpreting the 
>> +CONTENTS and related files (most notably in parsing commands to be 
>> honest).

Oh?  That's interesting.  Is data being re-parsed (in which case
some structural changes to parse it once and store the results
may help)?  Or is the parser just slow?

>>    Will post more conclusive results tomorrow once all of my results 
>> are available.

I don't follow ports@ so didn't see these "conclusive results"
of yours.  I'm very interested, though.

Tim Kientzle