PerfIt!

PerfIt is a tiny web service that tracks and plots metrics: typically time it takes to execute things in CI-pipelines.

Demo (keep clicking!):

It uses an embedded redb database to store samples, and can visualize them as SVG charts, either directly or inside simple pages.

It comes with a client-side command line tool.

Status: Working, still early, but deployed in at least one project's CI pipeline.

Running

If you're a Nix user you can run:

• nix run github:rustshop/perfit#perfitd for server side,
• nix run github:rustshop/perfit#perfit for CLI tool.

Otherwise, proceed like with any other Rust project.

Use perfit --help to discover available features.

Data model

There are accounts that have access tokens which act a bit like a user account, and metrics which are tracking data points over time.

There are three types of access tokens:

• root for initial setting up and potential server administration,
• admin, for creating post access tokens and metrics,
• post, which are ones used in the CI to post data points to metrics

Thanks to this structure it should be possible to share a single instance between multiple organizations/projects (account), and give only minimum required permissions to the CI workers.

Deploying

If you're a Nix user you'll be happy to know it comes with a NixOS module, and you can use as a commit setting it up as a reference.

Generate initial root access token locally with perfit token gen and set it on the perfitd server via env variable.

Use perfit account new to create first production account. This will require authorization with root account token and should generate new account id and corresponding admin token to use on it.

Using admin token and perfit metric new create metrics you need, and write them down for further use.

In your CI use perfit run or perfit post to send data points to perfitd to be recorded under corresponding metric.

Tech stack

In case you want to hack on it or use as a reference:

• Rust
• Nix flakes for building and dev shell
• redb Rust local key-value store database
• axum Rust web server library
• maud Rust html templating library
• htmx for dynamic html frontend
• tailwind for styling
• poloto SVG 2D plotting library

In particular redb uses redb-bincode crate which helps storing structured data inside redb, and build.rs script handles automatic tailwind style rebuilding during development and release build.