LitJSON Benchmarks
==================

This directory contains a number of benchmarks to verify the speed and heap
usage of different pieces of LitJSON, and compare these items against two
alternative JSON libraries: Jayrock[1] and Newtonsoft Json.NET[2].

Although raw speed is not the main priority of LitJSON, it's intended to
have fairly good performance. The purpose of these benchmarks is mainly to
keep track of this, and make sure it is not significantly worse than
average. These benchmarks have certainly helped spot several problems with
the original way things were being done, and much gratitude goes towards the
creators of Jayrock and Newtonsoft Json.NET; without their excellent work,
this library would not be what it is now.

The benchmarks are split in several files, according to functionality and
library being tested. With that in mind, source files follow the naming
convention 'Bm[LIB][FUNC].cs' where 'LIB' is one of 'Jayrock', 'LitJson' or
'Newtonsoft', and [FUNC] is one of:

* Reader: Test the Reader interface of the libraries
* Writer: Test the Writer interface of the libraries
* Import: Test the conversion from JSON to .Net objects
* Export: Test the conversion from .Net objects to JSON
* Output: Not really benchmarks, just simple methods that output some
          data to a .txt file just for debugging purposes

The main benchmarking program is Benchmark.cs by Jon Skeet[3].

To compile and run the benchmarks you may use GNU make. A 'GNUmakefile' is
provided, so all you need is to run 'make' (or 'gmake', if that's the name
of the binary on your system) on this directory.

Please notice that in order to compile the benchmarks you have to put the
required .dll's on this directory as well. LitJson.dll can be copied from
the bin/ directory once 'make' is run in the top directory. Jayrock's and
Newtonsoft's dll files are not distributed with LitJSON, so you need to get
them from their websites, and then put them here.

If you want to get information regarding heap usage of the different
benchmarks, you need to have heap-buddy[4] installed as well. Running 'make'
without arguments should give you further instructions on how to proceed.

---
[1] http://jayrock.berlios.de/
[2] http://www.newtonsoft.com/products/json/
[3] Benchmark.cs by Jon Skeet, copied verbatim from
    http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/benchmark.html
[4] http://www.mono-project.com/HeapBuddy