When Python is not compiled with PGO, the performance of Python on call_simple
and call_method microbenchmarks depend highly on the code placement. In the
worst case, the performance slowdown can be up to 70%.
The GCC __attribute__((hot)) attribute helps to keep hot code close to reduce
the risk of such major slowdown. This attribute is ignored when Python is
compiled with PGO.
The following functions are considered as hot according to statistics collected
by perf record/perf report:
* _PyEval_EvalFrameDefault()
* call_function()
* _PyFunction_FastCall()
* PyFrame_New()
* frame_dealloc()
* PyErr_Occurred()
* BUILD_TUPLE_UNPACK and BUILD_MAP_UNPACK_WITH_CALL no longer generated with
single tuple or dict.
* Restored more informative error messages for incorrect var-positional and
var-keyword arguments.
* Removed code duplications in _PyEval_EvalCodeWithName().
* Removed redundant runtime checks and parameters in _PyStack_AsDict().
* Added a workaround and enabled previously disabled test in test_traceback.
* Removed dead code from the dis module.
Tested on macOS 10.11 dtrace, Ubuntu 16.04 SystemTap, and libbcc.
Largely based by an initial patch by Jesús Cea Avión, with some
influence from Dave Malcolm's SystemTap patch and Nikhil Benesch's
unification patch.
Things deliberately left out for simplicity:
- ustack helpers, I have no way of testing them at this point since
they are Solaris-specific
- PyFrameObject * in function__entry/function__return, this is
SystemTap-specific
- SPARC support
- dynamic tracing
- sys module dtrace facility introspection
All of those might be added later.
