Hi,
> > Not necessary to stick to 10 runs, just because I said so. It can be > even 3 or 5 runs. Whichever you feel seem to be good enough to give > some insights. E.g., you might feel that after 3 runs you are getting > constant time and not much difference, in another case you might get > all different values even on running it more than 3-5 times. > That gave me some good insights. Rebooting surely keeps results consistent to some level. Also, I noticed with subsequent runs, it would slow down(not much, but does). After rebooting also only one thing remains consistent which is the temperature of my Mac. I searched google[1] and it mentions that as the Mac heats up more, the fans start running fast and processes slow down. Generally Mac heats up to a nice extent when I try installing ports continuously(even after reboot). Also my Mac has a weird configuration(2012 mid edition, dual core, running Mojave with a WD ssd and 8gb symtronics ram). When I wait for Mac to cool down, results actually become a bit more consistent. > > These were just some random thoughts I had. Not necessary to stick to > these or follow each and every one. Just try different ways. Guest > user might be a good option (not sure though). > > I would say if these things (i.e., reboot/fresh install of OS) impact > the timeline if you end up running tests for several days or weeks, I > would say then just run acceptable number of tests and when you feel > 'Ya, this is the sweet spot', you may skip extensive tests (like > rebooting system for each and every port 10 times or so). > Currently I only tested gettext port [2], and you would see the time taken increases with subsequent runs(in case of modified trace mode). Unmodified I tested later, which is why results stay consistent maybe, and the 6th test(which I didn’t count in avg results), I took that after waiting for Mac to cool down. Also this time for tests, I didn’t count distfiles fetching time because the time taken for that varies a lot. > > Also, I would rather not do fresh install of OS on personal laptop > each time I want to test a port. I was thinking more on terms of a > Sandboxed environment or a VM(?) which has same setup and resources on > each run, and which can be easily spinned up and deleted (in matter or > minutes, in parallel, or whatever). Like a cloud platform as a service > kind of thing, if it helps. It's easier if you can run these tests on > Linux, since cloud has linux servers, but I don't believe major cloud > providers provide MacOS VM's or anything of that sorts. > > I searched about VM’s but generally I am not sure of it. Some places it mentions something like its illegal to create iso file of macOS. Some places it tells its legal so I am pretty much unsure to do that or no. For cloud services I found this [3], although if the need for cloud services arises, I would still need to make sure that if they would allow me to use sudo privileges before getting a plan for a month. Currently I feel at the least after rebooting and waiting for Mac to cool down, results become consistent to a really nice extent. For testing on hdd and fusion drive, I will probably have to rent a Mac from somewhere. One question, can I setup MacPorts base on an external hdd? I tried setting up one but it asks for specifying something like —build, —host ,—target. [1] https://setapp.com/how-to/how-to-fix-an-overheating-mac [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksj3Fex-AnTEU4f4IRzwUkTpN4XfUye-HqSdZwXOsKs/edit#gid=0 [3] https://www.macincloud.com Thanks for the help, Mihir
