speedrunner

speedrunner - Enhancing Command-Line Interface (CLI) Speed for Python, Ruby, PHP, and Node Tools

Command-line tools such as AWS CLI, Azure, GCloud, Ansible, ESLint, and many more, are often hampered by slow startup times due to interpreter initialization and code loading. speedrunner addresses this issue by utilizing a unique daemon process that keeps the execution environment preloaded, resulting in significant performance improvements.

Key Features

• Improved Speed: By running commands in a daemon that forks on every call, speedrunner achieves speed enhancements of 3x to 10x compared to native executions with no additional configuration per tool required.
• Identical Output: All commands maintain the same output as their native counterparts, ensuring reliability and consistency. If speedrunner cannot serve a command, it defaults to running natively to handle any issues.
• Efficient Resource Management: Only one daemon is active per tool, consuming approximately 28 to 40 MB of memory, and is automatically shut down after four hours of inactivity, which helps optimize system resource usage.

Speed Demonstrations

• A sample check script, designed to test various tools, showcases performance: executing common checks natively takes about 24 seconds, whereas with speedrunner, the time drops to just 5.3 seconds—an impressive fourfold improvement using preloaded daemons.
• Syntax highlighting for Javascript with eslint sees an execution time reduction from 328 milliseconds down to just 43 milliseconds, outperforming its standalone daemon.

Usage Examples

Leverage speedrunner to speed up your CLI calls seamlessly:

srr aws s3 ls                      # Using any command, without configuration needed
srr python3 -m pytest -q           # Running tests through the Python module
def script.sh:
  srr speedrunner exec ./script.sh  # Execute an entire script with optimized performance

Integration within scripts is simple, with daemons prepping as commands are typed, and tools can be initialized effortlessly:

eval "$(speedrunner activate)"     # Activates speedrunner in the current session
eval "$(speedrunner init zsh)"     # Initializes in .zshrc for automatic daemon warm-up

Comprehensive Support

Supported on Linux (x86_64 or aarch64) and macOS 11 or later (Intel and Apple Silicon), speedrunner requires only a single binary for installation and utilizes existing interpreters for the various languages supported (Python, Ruby, PHP, Node).

Performance Results

The performance metrics indicate substantial gains across 96 commands tested, with a geometric mean speedup of 5.6x and as much as 10x improvement on several commands, making it an essential tool for users who rely heavily on command-line utilities.

Conclusion

speedrunner offers a powerful solution for optimizing the speed of command-line tools commonly used in development workflows. By preloading execution environments and forking processes, it minimizes startup time while ensuring that the outputs remain consistent with native executions. Discover more about its capabilities and track performance with the comprehensive user guide and performance benchmarks available in the documentation.