📊 COMPREHENSIVE: Establish Performance Baselines & Regression Detection

[LarsArtmann]

🎯 OBJECTIVE

Complete comprehensive performance baseline establishment for Setup-Mac cross-platform development environment to enable optimization tracking and regression detection.

📋 CURRENT STATUS

Previous Work:

• ✅ Shell startup benchmarking implemented (just benchmark-shells)
• ✅ Performance monitoring tools deployed (ActivityWatch, Netdata)
• ✅ System health checks implemented (just health)
• ⚠️ No comprehensive baseline measurements
• ⚠️ No automated regression detection
• ⚠️ No application-level performance tracking

🎯 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

Phase 1: Core Baseline Metrics (HIGH PRIORITY)

• Shell Performance Baseline

  • Measure zsh, fish startup times (10 runs each)
  • Measure shell command execution performance
  • Document baseline in docs/performance/baseline-shell.md
  • Set performance thresholds in performance-thresholds.json

• System Performance Baseline

  • CPU benchmarking (single-core, multi-core)
  • Memory allocation and deallocation performance
  • Disk I/O performance (SSD read/write speeds)
  • Network performance (bandwidth, latency)
  • Document baseline in docs/performance/baseline-system.md

• Development Tool Performance

  • Go build times for standard project sizes
  • TypeScript compilation times
  • Nix evaluation and build times
  • Just command execution times
  • Document baseline in docs/performance/baseline-tools.md

Phase 2: Cross-Platform Comparison (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

• macOS vs NixOS Performance

  • Run identical benchmarks on both platforms
  • Document platform-specific differences
  • Identify cross-platform optimization opportunities
  • Create performance comparison matrix

• Hardware-Specific Optimizations

  • EVO-X2 (AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395) performance profiling
  • MacBook Air (Apple Silicon M2) performance profiling
  • GPU acceleration performance measurements
  • Memory and storage optimization validation

Phase 3: Automated Regression Detection (HIGH PRIORITY)

• Performance Alerting System

  • Implement automated baseline comparison
  • Create performance regression alerts
  • Integrate with Just commands (just perf-check)
  • Document performance thresholds

• Continuous Performance Tracking

  • Automated daily performance measurements
  • Historical performance database
  • Performance trend analysis
  • Regression detection and reporting

Phase 4: Application-Level Monitoring (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

• Development Workflow Performance

  • Time from code change to deployment
  • IDE startup and responsiveness measurements
  • Build pipeline performance analysis
  • Debug session performance tracking

• Resource Usage Monitoring

  • CPU, memory, disk usage during development
  • Identify resource bottlenecks
  • Optimization recommendations
  • Automated resource usage alerts

🔧 TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION

Performance Data Structure

{
  "baseline": {
    "shell": {
      "zsh_startup_ms": 850,
      "fish_startup_ms": 620,
      "benchmark_date": "2025-12-06"
    },
    "system": {
      "cpu_single_core": 2800,
      "cpu_multi_core": 11200,
      "memory_bandwidth": "68 GB/s",
      "disk_read_mb_s": 3200,
      "disk_write_mb_s": 2800
    },
    "tools": {
      "go_build_small_s": 2.3,
      "go_build_medium_s": 12.7,
      "nix_eval_s": 4.1,
      "just_switch_s": 8.9
    }
  },
  "thresholds": {
    "shell_regression_percent": 15,
    "system_regression_percent": 10,
    "tools_regression_percent": 20
  }
}

Just Commands to Implement

just baseline-establish    # Create comprehensive baseline
just baseline-check       # Compare against baseline
just perf-track          # Daily performance tracking
just perf-report         # Generate performance report
just perf-alerts         # Show performance regressions

📊 SUCCESS METRICS

1. ✅ Comprehensive Baseline: All performance areas measured and documented
2. ✅ Cross-Platform Comparison: macOS vs NixOS performance matrix complete
3. ✅ Automated Tracking: Daily performance measurements automated
4. ✅ Regression Detection: Performance regressions automatically detected and alerted
5. ✅ Optimization Impact: Performance improvements measurable and documented
6. ✅ Documentation Complete: All baselines and procedures documented

🚨 BLOCKERS & RISKS

Current Blockers:

• No Baseline Data: Starting from scratch, need to establish all measurements
• Cross-Platform Testing: Need both macOS and NixOS systems for comparison
• Hardware Access: EVO-X2 hardware not yet deployed for real-world testing

Mitigation Strategies:

• Progressive Implementation: Start with macOS baseline, expand to NixOS
• Simulation Testing: Use QEMU for NixOS testing if hardware unavailable
• Conservative Thresholds: Set generous initial thresholds, tighten over time

🎖️ PRIORITY LEVELS

🔴 HIGH PRIORITY (This Week)

• Shell performance baseline establishment
• System performance baseline establishment
• Automated regression detection implementation
• Performance alerting system

🟡 MEDIUM PRIORITY (Next 2 Weeks)

• Cross-platform performance comparison
• Application-level performance monitoring
• Hardware-specific optimization validation
• Continuous performance tracking

🟢 LOW PRIORITY (Next Month)

• Advanced performance analytics
• Performance optimization recommendations
• Automated performance tuning
• Community performance data sharing

📚 EXISTING RESOURCES

• justfile - Existing benchmark commands to enhance
• performance-thresholds.json - Current performance data structure
• docs/status/ - Performance monitoring history
• platforms/ - Cross-platform optimization opportunities
• AGENTS.md - Agent guidance for performance work

🔗 RELATED ISSUES

• Add comprehensive RISC-V support to NixOS configurations #130 - RISC-V support (will need performance baseline)
• Enhance Dynamic Library Management System (nix-ld inspired improvements) #125 - Dynamic library management (performance impact)
• 🔧 Optimize and Benchmark Wrapper Performance #104 - Wrapper performance optimization
• Performance monitoring documentation in docs/status/

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🕐 Created: 2025-12-06
🎯 Target Completion: 2025-12-13 (Phase 1), 2025-12-20 (Phase 2-3)
📊 Estimated Effort: 12-16 hours total
🔍 Dependencies: EVO-X2 deployment for hardware-specific baselines