Talos tests- summary of recent changes

I have done a poor job of communicating status on our performance tooling, this is something I am trying to rectify this quarter.  Over the last 6 months many new talos tests have come online, along with some differences in scheduling or measurement.

In this post I will highlight many of the test related changes and leave other changes for a future post.

Here is a list of new tests that we run:

* cpstartup – (content process startup: thanks :gabor)
* sessionrestore many windows – (instead of one window and many tabs, thanks :beekill)
* perf-reftest[-singletons] – (thanks bholley, :heycam)
* speedometer – (thanks :jmaher)
* tp6 (amazon, facebook, google, youtube) – (thanks :rwood, :armenzg)

These are also new tests, but slight variations on existing tests:

* tp5o + webextension, ts_paint + webextension (test web extension perf, thanks :kmag)
* tp6 + heavy profile, ts_paint + heavy profile (thanks :rwood, :tarek)

The next tests have  been updated to be more relevant or reliable:

* damp (many subtests added, more upcoming, thanks :ochameau)
* tps – update measurements (thanks :mconley)
* tabpaint – update measurements (thanks :mconley)
* we run all talos tests on coverage builds (thanks :gmierz)

It is probably known to most, but earlier this year we stood up testing on Windows 10 and turned off our talos coverage on Windows 8 (big thanks to Q, for making this happen so fast)

Some changes that might not be so obvious, but worth mentioning:

* Added support for Time to first non blank paint (only tp6)
* Investigated mozAfterPaint on non-empty rects– updated a few tests to measure properly
* Added support for comparing perf measurements between tests (perf-reftests) so we can compare rendering time of A vs B- in this case stylo vs non-stylo
* tp6 requires mitmproxy for record/replay- this allows us to have https and multi host dns resolution which is much more real world than serving pages from http://localhost.
* Added support to wait for idle callback before testing the next page.

Stay tuned for updates on Sheriffing, non Talos tests, and upcoming plans.

A-Team contribution opportunity – Dashboard Hacker

I am excited to announce a new focused project for contribution – Dashboard Hacker.  Last week we gave a preview that today we would be announcing 2 contribution projects.  This is an unpaid program where we are looking for 1-2 contributors who will dedicate between 5-10 hours/week for at least 8 weeks.  More time is welcome, but not required.

What is a dashboard hacker?

When a developer is ready to land code, they want to test it. Getting the results and understanding the results is made a lot easier by good dashboards and tools. For this project, we have a starting point with our performance data view to fix up a series of nice to have polish features and then ensure that it is easy to use with a normal developer workflow. Part of the developer work flow is the regular job view, If time permits there are some fun experiments we would like to implement in the job view.  These bugs, features, projects are all smaller and self contained which make great projects for someone looking to contribute.

What is required of you to participate?

• A willingness to learn and ask questions
• A general knowledge of programming (most of this will be in javascript, django, angularJS, and some work will be in python.
• A promise to show up regularly and take ownership of the issues you are working on
• Good at solving problems and thinking out of the box
• Comfortable with (or willing to try) working with a variety of people

What we will guarantee from our end:

• A dedicated mentor for the project whom you will work with regularly throughout the project
• A single area of work to reduce the need to get up to speed over and over again.
  • This project will cover many tools, but the general problem space will be the same
• The opportunity to work with many people (different bugs could have a specific mentor) while retaining a single mentor to guide you through the process
• The ability to be part of the team- you will be welcome in meetings, we will value your input on solving problems, brainstorming, and figuring out new problems to tackle.

How do you apply?

Get in touch with us either by replying to the post, commenting in the bug or just contacting us on IRC (I am :jmaher in #ateam on irc.mozilla.org, wlach on IRC will be the primary mentor).  We will point you at a starter bug and introduce you to the bugs and problems to solve.  If you have prior work (links to bugzilla, github, blogs, etc.) that would be useful to learn more about you that would be a plus.

How will you select the candidates?

There is no real criteria here.  One factor will be if you can meet the criteria outlined above and how well you do at picking up the problem space.  Ultimately it will be up to the mentor (for this project, it will be :wlach).  If you do apply and we already have a candidate picked or don’t choose you for other reasons, we do plan to repeat this every few months.

Looking forward to building great things!

Language hacking – changing the choice of words we use

Have you ever talked to someone who continues to use the same word over and over again?  Then you find that many people you chat with end up using the same choice of words quite frequently.  My wife and I see this quite often, usually with the word ‘Amazing’, ‘cool’, and ‘hope’.

• Are these words necessary in conversation?
• Do these words we choose lose value due to overuse?
• Are we communicating effectively?
• Do others who are jaded by these words associate other meanings or intentions to the words we use?

Lets focus on the word “hope”.  There are many places where hope is appropriate, but I find that most people misuse the word.  For example:

I hope to show up at yoga on Saturday

I heard this sentence and wonder:

• do you want to show up to yoga on Saturday?
• are you saying this to make me feel good?
• are there other things preventing you from committing to yoga on Saturday?

What could be said is:

I am planning to show up at yoga on Saturday

or:

I have a lot of things going on, if all goes well I will show up at yoga on Saturday

or:

I don’t want to hurt your feelings by saying no, so to make you feel good I will be non committal about showing up to yoga on Saturday even though I have no intentions.

There are many ways to replace the word “hope”, and all of them achieve a clearer communication between two people.

Now with that said, what am I hacking?  For the last few months I have been reducing (almost removing) the words ‘awesome’, ‘amazing’, ‘hate’, and ‘hope’ from my vocabulary.

Why am I writing about this?  I might as well be in the open about this and invite others to join me in being deliberate about how we speak.  Once a month I will post a new word, feel free to join me in this effort and see how thinking about what you say and how you say it impacts your communications.

Also please leave comments on this post about specific words that you feel are overused – I could use suggestions of words.

update March 28, 2015 – this post has been translated:

Пост доступен на сайте softdroid.net: Язык взлома – изменение выбора используемых слов.