py-pal 1.3.0
Estimate Asymptotic Runtime Complexity from Bytecode executions
License: MIT
Requires Python: >=3.7

========
Overview
========



The *Python Performance Analysis Library* (*py-pal*) is a profiling tool for the Python programming language. With
*py-pal* one can approximate the time complexity (big O notation) of Python functions in an empirical way. The arguments
of the function and the executed opcodes serve as a basis for the analysis.

To the `docs <https://py-pal.readthedocs.io>`_.


Installation
============

Requirements
------------
- An installation of the CPython implementation of the Python programming language of version greater or equal to 3.7
    - For instance: https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.9/python-3.7.9-amd64.exe
- A compiler for the C/C++ programming language:
    - On Microsoft Windows, we use the *Buildtools für Visual Studio 2019*:
        https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/de/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=BuildTools&rel=16
    - On Linux, any C compiler supported by Cython e.g. g++

Install py-pal via pip by running:
----------------------------------
This project requires CPython and a C compiler to run. Install CPython >= 3.7, then install py-pal by running:


    pip install py-pal
    
or

    python -m pip install py-pal

    
Command line usage of the py-pal module
=======================================

    python -m py_pal <target-module/file>

or

    py-pal <target-module/file>

There are multiple aliases to the same command: `py-pal`, `py_pal` and `pypal`. If py-pal is executed this way, all
functions called in the code are captured and analyzed. The output is in the form of a pandas data frame.
    
See the help message:

    py-pal -h

py-pal can perform cost analysis on a line-by-line basis:

    py-pal <file> -l/--line

The --separate flag can be used to examine the cost function of individual arguments (**caution**: this function assumes
the independence of the arguments):

    py-pal <file> -s/--separate

The output of the results can be noisy, to limit this you can use --filter-function to filter the desired functions from
the result. Regular expressions are supported:

    py-pal <file> -ff/--filter-function .*_sort

Similarly, the result can also be filtered by modules with --filter-module, e.g. to exclude importlib modules

    py-pal <file> -fm/--filter-module "^(?!<frozen.*>).*"

To save the results in a specified folder use --out:

    py-pal <file> -o/--out results

The output format can be changed with --format:

    py-pal <file> -o/--out results --format json

With the additional specification of the --plot flag, the cost functions of the result set are stored as images:

    py-pal <file> -o/--out results -p/--plot

For the --log-level flag see the `development <https://py-pal.readthedocs.io/en/latest/development.html#logging>`_ docs.

Example, creating plots for selected functions:

    py-pal tests/examples/sort.py -o results -p -f sort

Programmatic usage of the py-pal module
=======================================

To profile a single function and get the complexity estimate there is *profile_function*.

.. sourcecode:: python

    from py_pal.core import profile_function
    from py_pal.data_collection.opcode_metric import OpcodeMetric
    from py_pal.datagen import gen_random_growing_lists
    from algorithms.sort import bubble_sort

    profile_function(OpcodeMetric(), gen_random_growing_lists(), bubble_sort)


The *profile* decorator:

.. sourcecode:: python

    from py_pal.core import profile, DecoratorStore

    @profile
    def test():
        pass

    # Must be called at some point
    test()

    estimator = AllArgumentEstimator(DecoratorStore.get_call_stats(), DecoratorStore.get_opcode_stats())
    res = estimator.export()


By using the *profile* decorator, it is possible to annotate Python functions such that only the annotated Python
functions will be profiled. It acts similar to a whitelist filter.

Another possibility is to use the context-manager protocol:

.. sourcecode:: python

    from py_pal.analysis.estimator import AllArgumentEstimator
    from py_pal.data_collection.tracer import Tracer

    with Tracer() as t:
        pass

    estimator = AllArgumentEstimator(t.get_call_stats(), t.get_opcode_stats())
    res = estimator.export()

    # Do something with the resulting DataFrame
    print(res)


The most verbose way to use the *py-pal* API:

.. sourcecode:: python

    from py_pal.analysis.estimator import AllArgumentEstimator
    from py_pal.data_collection.tracer import Tracer


    t = Tracer()
    t.trace()

    # Your function
    pass

    t.stop()
    estimator = AllArgumentEstimator(t.get_call_stats(), t.get_opcode_stats())
    res = estimator.export()

    # Do something with the resulting DataFrame
    print(res)

All examples instantiate a tracer object that is responsible for collecting the data. After execution, the collected
data is passed to the analysis module. Finally, an estimate of the asymptotic runtime of the functions contained in the
code is obtained.

Modes
-----
In the current version py-pal offers only the **profiling mode**. Although ``py_pal.datagen`` offers some functions for
generating inputs, py-pal must be combined with appropriate test cases to realize a **performance testing mode**. An
automatic detection and generation of appropriate test inputs does not exist at the moment.

Limitations
-----------
The profiling approach implemented by the py-pal modules does not distinguish between different threads executing a
Python function. Actually it is a major problem to profile a Python script which makes use of threads. The bytecode
counting strategy will increase all counters of Python functions on the current call stack no matter what threads is
executing it. Thus, the data points will not be accurate to what really happened during the profiled execution of the
script.

Licensing Notes
===============
This work integrates some code from the `big_O <https://github.com/pberkes/big_O>`_ project. More specifically, most
code in ``py_pal.analysis.complexity``, ``py_pal.datagen`` and ``py_pal.analysis.estimator.Estimator.infer_complexity``
is adapted from bigO.

Changelog
=========

What's New in Py-PAL 1.3.0
--------------------------

Command line interface changes:
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
- Renamed -f/--function to -ff/--filter-function
- Added -fm/--filter-module functionality to filter results by module

Py-PAL 1.2.0
------------

- Improved the statistics and plotting output

Command line interface changes:
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
- Deprecated `--save` flag in favor of `-o/--out`
- Renamed `-V/--visualize` to `-p/--plot`
- Change functionality of `-f/--function` from executing and profiling a specific function inside a python file to applying the analysis to a selected function. Regular expressions are suported.

Py-PAL 1.1.0
------------

- Improved Data Collection: The heuristic for determining the size of function arguments has been improved.
- More tests
- More documentation
- More argument generation functions in `py_pal.datagen`
- Replaced command line option --debug with --log-level for more configurable log output

Refactoring
"""""""""""
Project structure changes, overall CLI interface is unchanged.
API changes:

- `py_pal.tracer` moved to `py_pal.data_collection.tracer`
- `py_pal.complexity` and `py_pal.estimator` moved to the `py_pal.analysis` package.
- `py_pal.analysis.estimator.Estimator` now takes call and opcode stats as arguments.

Py-PAL 1.0.0
------------

- More thorough testing from different combinations of requirements and Python versions.
- Bug fixes

Py-PAL 0.2.1
------------

Refactoring
"""""""""""

The `estimator` module was refactored which introduces a slight change to the API.
Classes inheriting from `Estimator` now only specify how to transform the collected data with respect to the arguments
of the function.

Instead of `ComplexityEstimator` you should use the `AllArgumentEstimator` class. Additionally there is the
`SeparateArgumentEstimator` which is experimental.

Py-PAL 0.1.6
------------

More accurate Data Collection
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

The `Tracer` is enhanced by measuring builtin function calls with `AdvancedOpcodeMetric`.

Opcodes resembling a function call .e.g `FUNCTION_CALL` are filtered for built in function calls.
If the called function is found in the complexity mapping a synthetic Opcode weight gets assigned.
A builtin function call is evaluated using its argument and a pre-defined runtime complexity e.g. O(n log n) for
`sort()`.

- The feature is enabled by default
- The calculation produces a performance overhead and can be disabled by providing a `OpcodeMetric` instance to the `Tracer`
- The `AdvancedOpcodeMetric` instance assigned to the `Tracer` provides statistics about how many builtin function calls were observed and how many were found in the complexity map

Bugfixes
""""""""
- Cleaning data after normalization introduced wrong data points