alacritty/termbenchbot

Termbenchbot is an automated benchmarking tool that measures how fast terminal emulators run. Its main job is to run performance tests on a daily basis and keep a historical record of the results, so developers can track whether their terminal software is getting faster or slower over time. The project works by pairing a separate tool called vtebench with a set of scripts. Vtebench generates heavy text workloads, like rapid scrolling or dense grids of characters, and the scripts measure how long it takes a terminal emulator to handle them. The tool includes pre-made configuration files for every terminal it supports, which keeps the testing environment consistent. After running the tests, it uses a tool called gnuplot to automatically generate charts showing the results, saving them in a results folder. This tool is built for developers who work on terminal emulators, like the Alacritty project. For example, if a developer changes how their terminal handles scrolling or unicode text, they can look at the charts to see if the change caused a slowdown. It currently focuses on tracking the latest development version of Alacritty, automatically running daily tests and logging the data. The setup is highly automated and requires a specific environment to work correctly. The scripts must run with root permissions so they can start a bare-bones graphical server, which isolates the tests from other computer activities that might skew the timing. Because of these requirements, this is not a casual tool for everyday users, but rather a dedicated system for maintainers who need reliable performance tracking.