suggestions for cross-version benchmarking test tool?

[Bernard Devlin]

Ok, so since Chipp thinks my benchmark is pretty crummy (which I'm happy to
believe), can someone provide me with what they think would be a better way
to benchmark the speed of the different engines?  I'm reluctant to use
Wilhelm's suggestion on Linux, since there is a known memory leak to do with
the interaction of Rev and XWindows on Rev 2.9 and Rev 3.0 (by my
observation Rev causes X to leak about 2mb every 3 seconds whilst the stack
that demonstrates the leak runs).  So, I think it's best if any benchmark
tries to limit any use of graphics, so that we can try to eliminate/minimize
this known bug.
As Chipp suggested, I searched the archive for 'benchmarks gaskin' but
didn't come up with anything that seemed like a test of the engine rather
than a test of a specific feature e.g. regex, filter, offset.  I had a look
at Richard's revBench but that seems to be a tool designed to just compare
two different scripts within the same version of Revolution.

I'm looking for something to explain why there are noticeable flickers (for
me) in various components of the Rev 3.0 IDE (elements within the menu bar
and within property inspectors).  As I've mentioned there is a known bug
with X, but equally these flickers may be nothing to do with that bug.  I
think that Rev 3.0 on Linux is just running slower than it is on Windows.

If the Linux engines is running slower, whilst the Windows (and maybe OS X)
engines have had a significant speed increase, then this could be useful
information for the Runrev developers.  This speed issue is not merely a
cosmetic issue (even though it does help make Rev on Linux look amateurish).
 Furthermore, the script editor of Rev 3.0 is also quite unusable, since it
slows down to a crawl with a script with 2000 lines (it's even noticeably
slow on a script of 36 lines).

I know my Linux laptop is not the fastest (1.6ghz intel atom), but the
flickers are also evident on Linux running inside virtual machines.  The
flickers aren't there in 2.6.1 on my laptop.


Bernard