A more compact, colourful, output style.

[tecosaur]

Hi!

I find this tool great to use, but I can't help but think that the visual output could be polished a bit. One micro-benchmark tool that I think does a really nice job with this is hyperfine.

I think looking at what's done well by it could lead to a Benchmark output that's a bit easier to glance at 🙂

For example:

which I think is nicer than

[tecosaur]

If you'd like, I'd be happy to make a PR implementing this 🙂.

[tecosaur]

Oh, another idea I've just had. Instead of a boxplot, one could use the unicode block characters to produce a histogram.

[tecosaur]

So, the above is a mock-up I made by echoing a string + shell-escape colour codes. But I liked the idea enough that I thought I'd code it up for my own beautification if nothing else. This is what I currently have:

[tecosaur]

A heuristic to determine if the frequency should be logged would be good I think. Please let me know if you have any good ideas for a check. For reference, the above without logging frequency looks like this:

which I think is far less informative.

[tecosaur]

Heuristic determined, I think I'll turn this into a PR shortly.

[Arkoniak]

Other than color issues, I think it is not correct to override the current @benchmark macro which output is well known and readable. I mean, it depends on a user and I wouldn't be happy to see this new design, sorry.

Maybe change it to @hyperfine for those, who wants to use this visualization? We already have @btime and @benchmark for different outputs, so it is acceptable I guess to add another one.

[tecosaur]

I think it is not correct to override the current @benchmark macro which output is well known and readable.

I must admit I don't quite see your point here. My proposed replacement is perfectly readable, and I don't see the point of "well known" unless the way information is structured takes much getting used to --- and I don't think either the current or my proposed approaches do.

[Arkoniak]

My point is that all people are different and some prefer an existing version of @benchmark output to your proposal. It is not fair to force this design on them. At the very least, people should have a choice what version they want to use.

[ptoche]

IMHO the colors and other refinements should go into another package.