Fix slow performance with compiling HAML templates

In Rails 5, including `ActionView::Context` can have a significant and
hidden performance penalty because this module also includes
`ActionView::CompiledTemplates`. This means that any module that
includes ActionView::Context becomes a descendant of
`CompiledTemplates`.

When a partial is rendered for the first time, it runs
`ActionView::CompiledTemplates#module_eval`, which will evaluate a
string that defines a new method for that partial. For example, the
source of partial might be this string:

```
def _app_views_project_show_html_haml___12345(local_assigns, output)
  "hello world"
end
```

When this string is evaluated, the Ruby interpreter will define the
method and clear the global method cache for all descendants of
`ActionView::CompiledTemplates`. Previous to this change, we
inadvertently made a number of modules fall into this category:

* GroupChildEntity
* NoteUserEntity
* Notify
* MergeRequestUserEntity
* AnalyticsCommitEntity
* CommitEntity
* UserEntity
* Kaminari::Helpers::Paginator
* CurrentUserEntity
* ActionView::Base
* ActionDispatch::DebugExceptions::DebugView
* MarkupHelper
* MergeRequestPresenter

After this change:

* Kaminari::Helpers::Paginator
* ActionView::Base
* ActionDispatch::DebugExceptions::DebugView

Each time a partial is rendered for the first time, all methods for
those modules will have to be redefined. This can exact a significant
performance penalty.

How bad is this penalty? Using the following benchmark script, we can
use DTrace to sample the Ruby interpreter:

```
Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report do
    1000.times do
      ActionView::CompiledTemplates.module_eval("def testme\nend")
    end
  end
end
```

This revealed a 11x jump in the time spent in `core#define_method`
alone.

Rails 6 fixes this behavior by moving the `include CompiledTemplates`
into ActionView::Base so that including `ActionView::Context` doesn't
quietly affect other modules in this way.

Closes https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/11198

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/changelogs/unreleased/sh-fix-slow-partial-rendering.yml b/changelogs/unreleased/sh-fix-slow-partial-rendering.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..0f65a6f8d69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/unreleased/sh-fix-slow-partial-rendering.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+title: Fix slow performance with compiling HAML templates
+merge_request: 27782
+author:
+type: performance