perf: Move macro-benchmark documentation to cairo-traces

The macro benchmarks were moved to a separate repository some time ago,
but the perf README still refers to these tests as if they were still
present, which may lead to some confusion.  Instead, consolodate the
macro benchmark documentation with the macro benchmarks, and focus this
README on just the (still in tree) micro-benchmarks.

Signed-off-by: Bryce Harrington <b.harrington@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Uli Schlachter <psychon@znc.in>

1 files changed, 20 insertions, 69 deletions

diff --git a/perf/README b/perf/README
index beca927e1..9e402098a 100644
--- a/perf/README
+++ b/perf/README
@@ -1,26 +1,28 @@
-This is cairo's performance test suite.
+This is cairo's micro-benchmark performance test suite.
 
-One of the simplest ways to run the performance suite is:
+One of the simplest ways to run this performance suite is:
 
     make perf
 
 which will give a report of the speed of each individual test. See
 more details on other options for running the suite below.
 
-Running the cairo performance suite
------------------------------------
-The performance suite is composed of two types of tests, micro- and
-macro-benchmarks. The micro-benchmarks are a series of hand-written,
-short, synthetic tests that measure the speed of doing a simple
-operation such as painting a surface or showing glyphs. These aim to
-give very good feedback on whether a performance related patch is
-successful without causing any performance degradations elsewhere. The
-second type of benchmark consists of replaying a cairo-trace from a
-large application during typical usage. These aim to give an overall
-feel as to whether cairo is faster for everyday use.
+A macro test suite (with full traces and more intensive benchmarks) is
+also available; for this, see http://cgit.freedesktop.org/cairo-traces.
+The macro-benchmarks are better measures of actual real-world
+performance, and should be preferred over the micro-benchmarks (and over
+make perf) for identifying performance regressions or improvements.  If
+you copy or symlink this repository at cairo/perf/cairo-traces, then
+make perf will run those tests as well.
 
 Running the micro-benchmarks
 ----------------------------
+The micro-benchmark performance suite is composed of a series of
+hand-written, short, synthetic tests that measure the speed of doing a
+simple operation such as painting a surface or showing glyphs. These aim
+to give very good feedback on whether a performance related patch is
+successful without causing any performance degradations elsewhere.
+
 The micro-benchmarks are compiled into a single executable called
 cairo-perf-micro, which is what "make perf" executes. Some
 examples of running it:
@@ -41,25 +43,6 @@ when using cairo-perf-diff to compare separate runs (see more
 below). The advantage of using the raw mode is that test runs can be
 generated incrementally and appended to existing reports.
 
-Running the macro-benchmarks
-----------------------------
-The macro-benchmarks are run by a single program called
-cairo-perf-trace, which is also executed by "make perf".
-cairo-perf-trace loops over the series of traces stored beneath
-cairo-traces/. cairo-perf-trace produces the same output and takes the
-same arguments as cairo-perf-micro.  Some examples of running it:
-
-    # Report on all tests with default number of iterations:
-    ./cairo-perf-trace
-
-    # Report on 100 iterations of all firefox tests:
-    ./cairo-perf-trace -i 100 firefox
-
-    # Generate raw results for 10 iterations into cairo.perf
-    ./cairo-perf-trace -r -i 10 > cairo.perf
-    # Append 10 more iterations of the poppler tests
-    ./cairo-perf-trace -r -i 10 poppler >> cairo.perf
-
 Generating comparisons of separate runs
 ---------------------------------------
 It's often useful to generate a chart showing the comparison of two
@@ -227,43 +210,6 @@ added:
     64x64.
 
 
-How to record new traces
------------------------
-Using cairo-trace you can record the exact sequence of graphic operations
-made by an application and replay them later. These traces can then be
-used by cairo-perf-trace to benchmark the various backends and patches.
-
-To record a trace:
-$ cairo-trace --no-mark-dirty --no-callers $APPLICATION [$ARGV]
-
---no-mark-dirty is useful for applications that are paranoid about
-surfaces being modified by external plugins outside of their control, the
-prime example here is firefox.
---no-callers disables the symbolic caller lookup and so speeds tracing
-(dramatically for large c++ programs) and similarly speeds up the replay
-as the files are much smaller.
-
-The output file will be called $APPLICATION.$PID.trace, the actual path
-written to will be displayed on the terminal.
-
-Alternatively you can use:
-$ cairo-trace --profile $APPLICATION [$ARGV]
-which automatically passes --no-mark-dirty and --no-callers and compresses
-the resultant trace using LZMA. To use the trace with cairo-perf-trace you
-will first need to decompress it.
-
-Then to use cairo-perf-trace:
-$ ./cairo-perf-trace $APPLICATION.$PID.trace
-
-Alternatively you can put the trace into perf/cairo-traces, or set
-CAIRO_TRACE_DIR to point to your trace directory, and the trace will be
-included in the performance tests.
-
-If you record an interesting trace, please consider sharing it by compressing
-it, LZMA preferred, and posting a link to cairo@cairographics.org, or by
-uploading it to git.cairographics.org/cairo-traces.
-
-
 How to run cairo-perf-diff on WINDOWS
 -------------------------------------
 This section explains the specifics of running cairo-perf-diff under
@@ -286,3 +232,8 @@ From your mingw32 window, go to your cairo/perf directory and run the
 cairo-perf-diff script with the right arguments.
 
 Thanks for your contributions and have fun with cairo!
+
+TODO
+----
+Add a control language for crafting and running small sets of micro
+benchmarks.