As .NET developers, we often benchmark the performance of our methods using a single .NET version. However, we can also benchmark a method’s performance across different .NET versions. Such benchmarks can come in handy when we want to upgrade our codebase to a newer version. In such scenarios, we can use the benchmarks to identify potential performance improvements or downgrades that may come with the upgrade.<\/p>\n
In this article, let’s explore how to benchmark a method’s performance across different .NET versions using the BenchmarkDotNet library.<\/p>\n
Alright, let’s dive in.<\/p>\n
Before we define the method we want to benchmark, let’s create a project from the command-line interface:<\/p>\n
Next, let’s add the <\/strong> Finally, we need to download the various .NET SDKs we want to use for our benchmark<\/strong> from the .NET download page<\/a>. For this tutorial, we will be using the .NET 6.0, .NET 7.0, and .NET 8.0 SDKs.<\/p>\n After downloading and installing these SDKs, let’s configure our project to work with them. We can achieve this by modifying our This configuration is quite straightforward, we simply replace the <\/strong> Now, let’s define the method we wish to benchmark:<\/p>\n We start by creating a It’s important to note that our method has to be in a version of C# that is compatible with all the .NET versions we want to test<\/strong>. For example, we can’t use collection expressions<\/a>\u00a0in this method, as they were introduced in C# 12 with the .NET 8 SDK. This feature is not available in C# 10 and C# 11, which were shipped with the .NET 6 and .NET 7 SDKs, respectively.<\/p>\n With this, our setup is complete. Let’s now proceed to creating and executing our benchmark class.<\/p>\n First, let’s create a Here, we use the <\/strong> For more informative benchmark results, we apply a custom configuration to the class using the dotnet new console -o BenchmarkAcrossDifferentDotNETVersions<\/code><\/p>\nBenchmarkDotNet<\/code> package<\/strong> to this project:<\/p>\ndotnet add package BenchmarkDotNet<\/code><\/p>\n.csproj<\/code> file:<\/p>\n<Project Sdk=\"Microsoft.NET.Sdk\">\r\n\r\n <PropertyGroup>\r\n <OutputType>Exe<\/OutputType>\r\n <TargetFrameworks>net6.0;net7.0;net8.0<\/TargetFrameworks>\r\n <ImplicitUsings>enable<\/ImplicitUsings>\r\n <Nullable>enable<\/Nullable>\r\n <\/PropertyGroup>\r\n\r\n <ItemGroup>\r\n <PackageReference Include=\"BenchmarkDotNet\" Version=\"0.13.12\" \/>\r\n <\/ItemGroup>\r\n\r\n<\/Project><\/pre>\n
<TargetFramework>netx.0<\/TargetFramework><\/code> line in our <\/strong>.csproj<\/code> file with <\/strong><TargetFrameworks>net6.0;net7.0;net8.0<\/TargetFrameworks><\/code>.<\/p>\npublic record Book(string Title, string Author, string Publisher);\r\n\r\npublic class BookService\r\n{\r\n public static List<Book> GetBooks()\r\n => new()\r\n {\r\n new(\"Measuring Time\", \"Helon Habila\", \"W. W. Norton & Company\"),\r\n new(\"Americanah\", \"Chimamanda Adichie\", \"Alfred Knopf\"),\r\n new(\"Things Fall Apart\", \"Chinua Achebe\", \"William Heinemann Ltd.\")\r\n };\r\n}<\/pre>\nBook<\/code> record<\/code><\/a> with three positional parameters.\u00a0Then, we define a BookService<\/code> class with a single method that returns a list of books.<\/p>\n<\/a>Create and Run Our Benchmark Across Different .NET Versions<\/h2>\n
GetBooksBenchmark<\/code> class:<\/p>\n[SimpleJob(RuntimeMoniker.Net60, baseline: true)]\r\n[SimpleJob(RuntimeMoniker.Net70)]\r\n[SimpleJob(RuntimeMoniker.Net80)]\r\n[Config(typeof(StyleConfig))]\r\npublic class GetBooksBenchmark\r\n{\r\n private class StyleConfig : ManualConfig\r\n {\r\n public StyleConfig()\r\n => SummaryStyle = SummaryStyle.Default.WithRatioStyle(RatioStyle.Trend);\r\n }\r\n\r\n [Benchmark]\r\n public List<Book> GetBooks() => BookService.GetBooks();\r\n}<\/pre>\n[SimpleJob(RuntimeMoniker.Netxx)]<\/code> attribute to specify that our benchmark should be executed with the .NET 6.0, .NET 7.0, and .NET 8.0 runtimes<\/strong>. Also, we designate the .NET 6.0 runtime as the baseline for our benchmark. This means that BenchmarkDotnet<\/code> will compare the results we get from running our method with the other runtimes to those obtained from running our method with .NET 6.0.<\/p>\n[Config(typeof(StyleConfig))]<\/code> attribute. This attribute directs our benchmark class to the style configuration we define in the StyleConfig<\/code> class.<\/p>\n