Automatic benchmark plot generation in matplotlib

[SebastianSemper]

Problem

For the migration to Sphinx we need means of automatically generating plots based on data from CSV-files. Moreover it is useful for inspection during development to compare differing implementation with respect to speed, memory consumption and scaling. For this the detour over *TeX is very inconvenient and uncommon.

Requirements

• independence from *TeX
• few dependencies python-wise in terms of packages
• flexibility in sources and destinations
• automatic choice of the correct plot layout for the given benchmark data
• multiple output formats (PDF, PNG, TikZ, ...)

Solution

We extend util/bee.py with a plot mode. This mode should require one input. First, we specify the path of a folder, where the CSV-files are located. If the user specifies a second path, the PDF-files containing the plots will be saved to that destination. Moreover the user should be allowed to specify one or multiple formats, for the plot output. s possible call then could look like

python util/bee.py plot -i bencharks/ -o doc/_static/plots -f png pdf

The plot generator should be able to automatically detect from the filename of the CSV-file, how the data should be plotted by making sane choices for axis scaling, naming and data selection.