Summary

Replaces the tuple-based comparison in Event.__lt__ with direct attribute comparisons to avoid temporary tuple allocation during heap operations. Ordering semantics remains the same (time, priority, unique_id).

Fixes #3333

Motive

Event.__lt__ is called frequently by heapq during event scheduling. The previous implementation constructed temporary tuples on every comparison In heavy scheduling workloads, this leads to repeated small allocations and unnecessary overhead. Avoiding tuple creation reduces comparison cost while preserving the exact same ordering semantics.

Implementation

The tuple comparison

return (self.time, self.priority, self.unique_id) < (
    other.time,
    other.priority,
    other.unique_id,
)

was replaced with direct sequential comparison:

if self.time != other.time:
    return self.time < other.time
if self.priority != other.priority:
    return self.priority < other.priority
return self.unique_id < other.unique_id

No changes were made to event semantics, scheduling logic, or public APIs.

Additional Notes

• All existing mesa.time tests pass.
• Benchmarks under medium/heavy scheduling loads show consistent performance improvements.