Rationale:
Cost: we should be able to make a much more useful timing facility
than currently exists (even the nice stopwatch metaphor facility) in the
course of a semester.
benefit: System designers who use it will undoubtedly be pleased.
We will probably give it away (a) because we believe in free software, and
(b) as a freeby to attract customers and give them a warm feeling about us
to they will be inclined to use our other services.
Goals:
Make a program timer facility which supports good display of timing
results and convenient record keepying of timings made during the course
of a project.
Include facilities to support subsequent analysis of timings.
Scope:
We'll elaborate an ambitious project requiring, say, 6 designer/programmer months
or more.
We'll try to elaborate the costs of designing and implementing for wide portability
in particular.
But then we'll scale back to 6 person weeks worth (team is saunders-jochen maybe?)
for the fall semester. The scaled back version will at least involve
gui control of the display of timings.
System Functions:
R1.
Record processor speed and other hardare platform
properties with a view to cross platform comparison.
...
System Attributes:
A1.
Activities of the timer itself must minimally impact the accuracy of the times.
A2.
Portability to all major hardware platforms, all major operating systems,
many programming languages is a key design goal.
However success specifically for
C, C++, and Java programs
on Solaris on Sun hardware
makes it immediately useful at UDel.