65 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
65 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
|
---
|
||
|
|
title: "Side project retrospective"
|
||
|
|
date: 2022-08-21T06:15:56+03:00
|
||
|
|
---
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I spent 7 months building a project (hosted [here][turbonss]). Goal: make a
|
||
|
|
fastest known user/group NSS database. I succeeded, kinda. Here is an excerpt
|
||
|
|
from a conclusion I wrote this morning:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
This is the fastest known NSS passwd/group implementation for *reads*. On a
|
||
|
|
corpus with 10k users, 10k groups and 500 average members per group, `id`
|
||
|
|
takes 17 seconds with the glibc default implementation, 10-17 milliseconds
|
||
|
|
with a pre-cached `nscd`, ~8 milliseconds with `turbonss`.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Guess what? It is fastest, but not by enough (compared to nscd) to matter.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In lines of code:
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
===========================================================================
|
||
|
|
Language Files Lines Code Comments Blanks
|
||
|
|
===========================================================================
|
||
|
|
Markdown 3 522 0 422 100
|
||
|
|
Zig 23 5560 4601 242 717
|
||
|
|
===========================================================================
|
||
|
|
Total 26 6082 4601 664 817
|
||
|
|
===========================================================================
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
This enterprise reminds me of a project I did back at Amazon: I set out to
|
||
|
|
write a faster and more memory efficient throttling daemon (an API-compatible
|
||
|
|
CoralThrottle replacement). It took me ~1 month to build something that can be
|
||
|
|
meaningfully compared. Then while comparing the two I discovered that
|
||
|
|
CoralThrottle was not configured correctly on our environment. When I fixed
|
||
|
|
that, my implementation was even slower (to be expected!) than the upstream
|
||
|
|
one.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Story repeats itself.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
How was it?
|
||
|
|
-----------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Loads of fun! I learned Zig quite a bit, [contributed][zig-pr-motiejus] to the
|
||
|
|
stdlib. I can comfortably say that it is an amazing language for systems
|
||
|
|
programming. The best parts are C interop and comptime.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The initial motivation cooled down after 1-2 months, then I needed discipline
|
||
|
|
to get back to it. After 5 months of work I did not even start writing the
|
||
|
|
system integration part, so for a very long time I had nothing but unit tests
|
||
|
|
to see the progress.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I did not let myself start another project until this is finished. That was my
|
||
|
|
way to keep the "motivation" up. Now, on the morning of Sunday, 2022-08-21, it
|
||
|
|
is finished.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
What's next?
|
||
|
|
------------
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I will weather-proof the furniture in my terrace. :)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
On a serious note, I don't know what I will do with computers "on the side".
|
||
|
|
Maybe something with maps, finally. You will find it here.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
[turbonss]: https://git.sr.ht/~motiejus/turbonss/
|
||
|
|
[zig-pr-motiejus]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Amotiejus+
|