Lightbench

A lightweight benchmarking framework for measuring latency, throughput, and reliability metrics.

Features

• Three Benchmark Patterns: Request, Producer/Consumer, and Async Task (submit + poll)
• Benchmark Runner: High-level builder with automatic rate distribution across workers
• Rate Control: Per-worker token bucket (RateController) and shared lock-free pool (SharedRateController)
• CSV Export: Write snapshots to file with .csv(path) option
• Progress Display: User-friendly live progress or raw CSV output
• HDR Histogram Metrics: High-precision latency tracking with percentile reporting (p25, p50, p75, p95, p99)
• Sequence Tracking: Duplicate and gap detection for reliability measurement
• Error Bucketing: ErrorCounter groups errors by reason string for summary reporting

Quick Start

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
lightbench = "0.1"
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }

Benchmark Pattern (Request/Response)

use lightbench::{Benchmark, BenchmarkWork, WorkResult, now_unix_ns_estimate};

#[derive(Clone)]
struct MyWork { url: String }

struct MyState { client: reqwest::Client }

impl BenchmarkWork for MyWork {
    type State = MyState;

    async fn init(&self) -> MyState {
        // Called once per worker — put per-worker resources here.
        MyState { client: reqwest::Client::new() }
    }

    async fn work(&self, state: &mut MyState) -> WorkResult {
        let start = now_unix_ns_estimate();
        // ... your benchmark operation using state.client ...
        WorkResult::success(now_unix_ns_estimate() - start)
    }
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let results = Benchmark::new()
        .rate(1000.0)           // Total req/s (shared across workers)
        .workers(4)             // 4 workers compete for tokens
        .duration_secs(10)
        .csv("results.csv")     // Optional: export to CSV
        .progress(true)         // Optional: show progress (default: true)
        .work(MyWork { url: "http://localhost/".into() })
        .run()
        .await;

    results.print_summary();
}

Worker lifecycle: init() is called once per worker to create State. Put shared, Clone-friendly resources (URLs, config, Arc<Pool>) in the struct. Put resources that must not be shared across workers (HTTP clients, dedicated connections) in State.

Rate Modes:

• .rate(1000.0) — Shared rate pool (workers compete for 1000 total req/s)
• .rate_per_worker(250.0) — Each worker gets 250 req/s independently
• .rate(0.0) or .rate(-1.0) — Unlimited (maximum throughput)

Producer/Consumer Pattern

use lightbench::{ProducerConsumerBenchmark, now_unix_ns_estimate};
use std::collections::VecDeque;
use std::sync::Arc;
use tokio::sync::Mutex;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let queue = Arc::new(Mutex::new(VecDeque::new()));
    let q1 = queue.clone();
    let q2 = queue.clone();

    let results = ProducerConsumerBenchmark::new()
        .producers(4)
        .consumers(4)
        .rate(10_000.0)         // Total produce rate (shared across producers)
        .duration_secs(10)
        .produce(move || {
            let q = q1.clone();
            Box::pin(async move {
                q.lock().await.push_back(now_unix_ns_estimate());
                Ok(())
            })
        })
        .consume(move || {
            let q = q2.clone();
            Box::pin(async move {
                q.lock().await.pop_front()
                    .map(|ts| now_unix_ns_estimate().saturating_sub(ts))
            })
        })
        .run()
        .await;

    results.print_summary();
}

Closure contracts:

• produce: returns Ok(()) on success or Err(reason) on failure
• consume: returns Some(latency_ns) when an item was consumed, None when queue is empty (worker yields briefly)

Async Task Pattern (Submit + Poll)

use lightbench::{AsyncTaskBenchmark, PollResult};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let results = AsyncTaskBenchmark::new()
        .submit_workers(4)
        .poll_workers(4)
        .rate(500.0)
        .duration_secs(10)
        .submit(|| Box::pin(async {
            // POST to API, return Some(task_id) or None on failure
            Some(submit_task().await)
        }))
        .poll(|task_id| Box::pin(async move {
            match check_task(task_id).await {
                TaskStatus::Done(latency_ns) => PollResult::Completed { latency_ns },
                TaskStatus::Running => PollResult::Pending,
                TaskStatus::Failed(e) => PollResult::Error(e),
            }
        }))
        .run()
        .await;

    results.print_summary();
}

Examples

Noop (framework overhead baseline)

cargo run --release --example noop
cargo run --release --example noop -- --rate 100000 --workers 8 --duration 5

Options: --rate <N>, --rate-per-worker <N>, --workers <N>, --duration <S>, --csv <FILE>, --no-progress

HTTP GET Benchmark

cargo run --release --example http_get_benchmark -- --rate 1000 --duration 10 --workers 4

Options:

• --rate <N> — Total requests/sec (shared pool, use <=0 for unlimited)
• --rate-per-worker <N> — Requests/sec per worker (independent limiters)
• --duration <S> — Test duration in seconds (default: 10)
• --workers <N> — Worker count (default: 4)
• --csv <FILE> — Write snapshots to CSV
• --no-progress — Disable progress display, output CSV rows to stdout

Producer/Consumer Benchmark

cargo run --release --example producer_consumer -- \
    --producers 4 --consumers 4 --rate 10000 --duration 10

Options: --producers <N>, --consumers <N>, --rate <N>, --duration <S>, --csv <FILE>, --no-progress

Async Task Benchmark

cargo run --release --example async_task -- \
    --submit-workers 4 --poll-workers 4 --rate 500 --duration 10

Options: --submit-workers <N>, --poll-workers <N>, --rate <N>, --duration <S>, --processing-delay <MS>, --csv <FILE>, --no-progress

Modules

patterns

Three benchmark patterns, each a builder plus results type.

Benchmark (request pattern):

use lightbench::{Benchmark, BenchmarkWork, WorkResult, now_unix_ns_estimate};

#[derive(Clone)]
struct MyWork { url: String }
struct MyState { client: reqwest::Client }

impl BenchmarkWork for MyWork {
    type State = MyState;
    async fn init(&self) -> MyState { MyState { client: reqwest::Client::new() } }
    async fn work(&self, s: &mut MyState) -> WorkResult {
        let start = now_unix_ns_estimate();
        // ... use s.client ...
        WorkResult::success(now_unix_ns_estimate() - start)
    }
}

let results = Benchmark::new()
    .rate(1000.0)       // Shared rate pool (not split per-worker)
    .workers(4)         // Workers compete for tokens
    .duration_secs(10)
    .work(MyWork { url: "http://localhost/".into() })
    .run()
    .await;

results.print_summary();  // Formatted output
println!("Throughput: {:.2}", results.throughput());
println!("p99: {:.3}ms", results.p99_latency_ms());

ProducerConsumerBenchmark:

• .produce(fn) — rate-controlled, returns Ok(()) or Err(reason)
• .consume(fn) — free-running, returns Some(latency_ns) or None (empty)

AsyncTaskBenchmark:

• .submit(fn) — rate-controlled, returns Some(task_id: u64) or None
• .poll(fn) — free-running, returns PollResult::{Completed{latency_ns}, Pending, Error(reason)}

metrics

Statistics collection with HDR histogram for latency tracking.

use lightbench::Stats;

let stats = Stats::new();
stats.record_sent().await;
stats.record_received(latency_ns).await;
stats.record_received_batch(&[lat1, lat2, lat3]).await; // Efficient batch

let snapshot = stats.snapshot().await;
println!("Throughput: {:.2}", snapshot.total_throughput());
println!("p99: {}ns", snapshot.latency_ns_p99);

SequenceTracker — per-consumer duplicate/gap detection:

use lightbench::SequenceTracker;

let mut tracker = SequenceTracker::new();
tracker.record(seq);          // returns false if duplicate
tracker.duplicate_count();
tracker.gap_count();          // gaps within min..=max range
tracker.head_loss();          // min_seq (sequences lost before first received)

ErrorCounter — thread-safe error bucketing:

use lightbench::ErrorCounter;

let counter = ErrorCounter::new();
counter.record("timeout").await;
counter.record("connection refused").await;
let errors = counter.take().await;  // HashMap<String, u64>
ErrorCounter::print_summary(&errors);

rate

Token bucket rate limiters for controlled benchmarks.

RateController — per-worker:

use lightbench::RateController;

let mut rate = RateController::new(1000.0); // 1000 msg/s for this worker
loop {
    rate.wait_for_next().await;
    // send message...
}

SharedRateController — lock-free, shared across workers:

use lightbench::SharedRateController;
use std::sync::Arc;

let rate = Arc::new(SharedRateController::new(1000.0)); // 1000 msg/s total

for _ in 0..4 {
    let rate = rate.clone();
    tokio::spawn(async move {
        loop {
            rate.acquire().await;  // Workers compete for tokens
            // send message...
        }
    });
}

time_sync

Fast timestamp utilities avoiding syscall overhead.

use lightbench::{now_unix_ns_estimate, latency_ns};

let start = now_unix_ns_estimate();
// ... do work ...
let elapsed = latency_ns(start);

logging

Tracing initialization:

use lightbench::logging;

logging::init("info").ok();         // env-filter string
logging::init_default().ok();       // info level

output

Async CSV and stdout writers:

use lightbench::output::OutputWriter;

let mut writer = OutputWriter::new_csv("results.csv".to_string()).await?;
writer.write_snapshot(&snapshot).await?;
writer.flush().await?;

CSV Output Format

Snapshots are written as 19-column CSV rows:

timestamp,sent_count,received_count,error_count,total_throughput,interval_throughput,
latency_ns_p25,latency_ns_p50,latency_ns_p75,latency_ns_p95,latency_ns_p99,
latency_ns_min,latency_ns_max,latency_ns_mean,latency_ns_stddev,latency_sample_count,
duplicate_count,gap_count,head_loss

Quality columns (duplicate_count, gap_count, head_loss) are 0 unless a SequenceTracker is in use.