[R-pkg-devel] Slowdown running examples since 4.2 on Windows

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 6/30/22 17:45, Barbara Lerner wrote:
> Thanks for these suggestions.  I attempted to submit a slightly 
> earlier version of my package a few weeks ago and saw the slowdown on 
> winbuilder then, too.  I did not look into any further at that point.

I was curious about repeatability to rule out the option that it was 
simply that Winbuilder was overloaded at the time of checking the package.

Is the current version that also caused the problem available anywhere?

>
> I have tested it on a local Windows computer running 4.2.0 and I did 
> not see the slowdown there.  Here are those results:
>
> Name         user    system elapsed
>
> prov.json 1.11   0.24 2.19
>
> prov.run    0.99    0.06 1.93
>
> version  R version 4.2.0 (2022-04-22 ucrt)
>
> os       Windows 10 x64 (build 19044)
>
> system   x86_64, mingw32

It would be difficult to profile without being able to reproduce on a 
machine that can be used interactively and exclusively for the profiling.
Still, you could try narrowing it down by instrumenting the package - 
adding some timings, printing the outputs, and sending such instrumented 
package to Winbuilder

Tomas


>
>
> Tomas Kalibera wrote on 6/30/22 10:09 AM:
>>
>> On 6/29/22 22:25, Barbara Lerner wrote:
>>> I have a package that I want to submit an updated version for but the
>>> examples run too slowly on win-builder since 4.2 came out.  I just
>>> submitted the exact same tar.gz file to all 3 versions of R 
>>> available on
>>> win-builder and got the results shown below.  Notice the dramatic
>>> slowdown from 4.1.3 to 4.2.1.
>>>
>>> I don't know how to go about tracking down the cause of this slowdown.
>>> The examples are quite small.  I am reluctant to use \dontrun, but I am
>>> not sure what else to do.
>>
>> Could you perhaps submit to Winbuilder several times (with some 
>> non-trivial delay between the runs) to see if the very long execution 
>> is reproducible?
>>
>> If so, the next step could be trying on a Windows machine with 
>> interactive access, to reproduce, and if it is still so slow, 
>> checking where the time is spent, using an R profiler, using some C 
>> profiler (e.g. VerySleepy is free), comparing possibly to 4.1.3. It 
>> might be useful or necessary to also do the profiling with a debug 
>> build of Windows and/or the package, while the performance numbers 
>> will be skewed, one would see the symbol names.
>>
>> If you wanted specific help, please send a reproducible example - 
>> instructions how to run the code and which code.
>>
>> Best
>> Tomas
>>
>>>
>>> June 29 2:33 PM  - old release
>>> * using R version 4.1.3 (2022-03-10)
>>> i386 timings
>>> name    user    system    elapsed
>>> prov.json    3.28    0.33    5.19
>>> prov.run    2.70    0.27    4.18
>>>
>>> x64 timings
>>> name    user    system    elapsed
>>> prov.json    3.51    0.27    4.93
>>> prov.run    3.05    0.28    4.48
>>>
>>>
>>> June 29 2:19 PM  - release
>>> * using R version 4.2.1 (2022-06-23 ucrt)
>>> * using platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32 (64-bit)
>>> name    user    system    elapsed
>>> prov.json    16.98    8.81    26.82
>>> prov.run    3.53    0.42    4.89
>>>
>>>
>>> June 29  1:52 PM - devel
>>> * using R Under development (unstable) (2022-06-28 r82534 ucrt)
>>> * using platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32 (64-bit)
>>> name    user    system    elapsed
>>> prov.json    16.60     9.09    26.66
>>> prov.run    3.57    0.22    4.70 I then ran the same timing script 
>>> as win-builder uses on my Mac,
>>> using Rscript and got these results: name    user    system elapsed
>>> prov.json       1.105   0.159   1.329 prov.run        0.890 0.103
>>> 1.053 session_info reports:  version  R version 4.2.0 (2022-04-22)
>>>    os       macOS Catalina 10.15.7  system   x86_64, darwin17.0 I then
>>> installed 4.2.1 on my Mac. The time is a little slower but nothing like
>>> the slowdown on Windows.
>>> name    user    system  elapsed prov.json       1.286 0.230   3.080
>>> prov.run        0.940   0.108   1.131  version  R version 4.2.1
>>> (2022-06-23)  os       macOS Catalina 10.15.7  system x86_64, 
>>> darwin17.0
>>>
>
> -- 
> <http://www.getpostbox.com>Barbara Lerner (she / her)
> Professor
> Computer Science Department
> Mount Holyoke College
>
> <http://www.getpostbox.com>
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