[IronPython] parallel importing

[Curt Hagenlocher]

The" .NET people" might say they already have an answer which involves
precompiling the IL with NGEN.  And in fact, using DLR precompilation and
NGEN with IronPython results in some pretty nice performance improvements.
But using IronPython directly against .py files incurs several expenses that
aren't part of normal .NET startup.  We have to parse the .py file, build
DLR-level expression trees from the language tree and build IL from the
expression tree.  Only then are we at the point where a C# starts, and can
JIT the IL.

It's worth noting that CPython has to do similar work when it first loads a
.py file.  It, too, has to parse into a tree structure and generate byte
codes for the tree.  And even though the CPython byte code is at a higher
level than the IL generated by the DLR, CPython still has a performance
issue -- which is addressed by storing the byte codes as a .pyc file.

I'm hoping that over the next year, we'll come up with a convention (like
.pyc) that allows subsequent runs of a program to benefit from the work done
in previous runs -- without having to go through the manual step of DLR
precompilation.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 9:57 AM, Vernon Cole <vernondcole at gmail.com> wrote:

> Help me out here.  I have seen many references to schemes to optimize
> import speeds on Iron Python. Isn't this an attempt to make up for the
> snail-like startup speeds suffered by *all* .net applications? It seems to
> me that when Iron Python finally starts running, it imports and performs
> very well. The slowdown is in getting the .net engine started. Try comparing
> startup times for "Hello World" in C Python and Iron.
>    It is my experience that I can identify .net programs in general by the
> fact that I have double-clicked its desktop icon three times (thinking I had
> missed it somehow) before the first instance displays its splash screen, and
> then the next two display an "already running" dialog.
> Any chance of getting the .net people to help out with this?
> --
> Vernon Cole
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Dino Viehland <dinov at microsoft.com>wrote:
>
>> This is all still on 1.x, right?  It looks like #1 is fixed in 2.0 (we are
>> locking but on the wrong object in 1.x).
>>
>> #2 is still broken in 2.x though as well.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: users-bounces at lists.ironpython.com [mailto:
>> users-bounces at lists.ironpython.com] On Behalf Of Kamil Dworakowski
>> Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 4:45 AM
>> To: users at lists.ironpython.com
>> Subject: [IronPython] parallel importing
>>
>> Importing time is such a pain that I wanted to do it in parallel on
>> many threads. I figured that if the modules where imported in such a
>> way that:
>>
>> no two threads import the same module at the same time
>>
>> everything would be fine. To ensure that condition, it is enough to
>> build a dependency graph and import based on that.
>>
>> I did it: Resolver One start up time improved by 20% on a two-core
>> machine. But it crashes, surprisingly on single core machines it is
>> more often (6 crashes on 200 starts).
>>
>> So far I have identified two causes for crashes:
>>
>> 1. One thread imports a module with class B inside while another is
>> importing a module with class C inside. If B and C are subclasses of
>> A, it can result in IndexOutOfRangeException being raised, when, under
>> the hood, IronPython.Runtime.Types.DynamicType.AddSubclass is being
>> executed.
>>
>> 2. Attributes on .NET modules are loaded lazily, so importing
>> namespaces only is not enough. Attribute getting from reflected
>> packages is not thread safe. Looks like I would have to import every
>> class explicitly (would that be enough?).
>>
>> Second cause would be pretty easy to address, but I'm not so sure
>> about the first one. Are there any more potential points of problems?
>> I am beginning to think I was to optimistic about all of this
>> importing on multiple cores, but if these are the only ones it could
>> probably be still fixed.
>>
>> If anyone is interested the code for it is on github:
>> http://github.com/luntain/ipy-parallel-import.
>>
>> --
>> Kamil Dworakowski
>> Resolver Systems Ltd.
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>
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