(Update: PyLT has been renamed to Pylot)

(PyLT is the open source web performance/load test tool that I am developing)

A quick update on PyLT development...

The load generating engine is looking pretty solid and seems to work really well so far. It uses threading for concurrency and seems to scale well (though I haven't put it through its paces enough yet).

The GUI is evolving more and starting to look like a real performance/load testing tool:

This is my first project using wxWidgets and wxPython.  I am finding it to be very powerful and relatively straight forward to design nice user interfaces.  However, this is a big jump for me.  The past few years I have mostly done web programming and work with distributed systems.  It took a bit to get my head back into traditional GUI application development and event-driven programming

More to come...

Related:

• PyLT - Scratching My Itch - New Web Performance/Load Test Tool (Open Source)
• PyLT - Dev Update #1 - Web Performance/Load Test Tool
• PyLT - Dev Update #2 - Web Performance/Load Test Tool

C# method to convert an ascii string to hex:

public string ConvertToHex(string asciiString)
{
    string hex = "";
    foreach (char c in asciiString)
    {
        int tmp = c;
        hex += String.Format("{0:x2}", (uint)System.Convert.ToUInt32(tmp.ToString()));
    }
    return hex;
}

It's Official...

From the FSF press release:

"On Friday, June 29, at 12 noon (EDT), the Free Software Foundation will officially release the GNU GPL version 3.  Please join us in celebration as we bring to a close eighteen months of public outreach and comment, in revision of the world's most popular free software license."

GPLv3 has been a long time coming.  This is a big moment in Free Software.

Michael Tiemann (President of the Open Source Initiative):

"When is the OSI going to stand up to companies who are flagrantly abusing the term 'open source'?"
The answer is:  starting today.

Read more:  Will The Real Open Source CRM Please Stand Up?

(Update: PyLT has been renamed to Pylot)

(PyLT is the web performance/load test tool that I am developing)

A quick update on PyLT development...

This week I rewrote the GUI using wxPython.  It still needs a *lot* of work, but here is what it's starting to look like:

Related:
PyLT - Dev Update #1 - Web Performance/Load Test Tool
PyLT - Scratching My Itch - New Web Performance/Load Test Tool (Open Source)

Who cares.  After all, we are all consenting adults here.  Python is most definitely a multi-paradigm language.  This flexibility is one of Python's great features.

Tim Peters responding to accusations of Python not being a "true OO programming language" (1998):

Jeff:
> So how does Python implement encapsulation? From
> what I have seen it does not, and therefore may contain
> many OO concepts, but cannot be considered a
> true OO programming language.

Tim Peters:
Indeed, and because it doesn't support closures, it's not a true
functional programming language either. And because you have to import
all sorts of modules to do the simplest things (e.g., regular
expressions), neither is it a true scripting language. Indeed, because
it doesn't support labeled break or continue statements, it's not even
a true structured programming language.

(Update: PyLT has been renamed to Pylot)

A quick update on PyLT development...

I have a working version of the guts of my tool (the multi-threaded load generator).  I have now started working on the user interface.  My initial idea was to use Tk for the GUI Toolkit.  I started developing a minimal GUI and quickly realized I need a Toolkit more powerful than Tk.

My original justification for using Tkinter (from blog comments):

"I will probably eventually move to a richer toolkit (like wxPython) if I take this thing far. For right now, Tk works. It comes distributed with core python, it's super fast and light, it's easy to use, and I know it pretty well. Though it looks like crap and is limited in many ways."

As of today I am rewriting the GUI with wxPython, which uses the wxWidgets Toolkit.  This should give me the ability to create a rich cross-platform UI for my tool.

[For posterity] Here is what the original prototype of the Tk UI looked like:

R.I.P. Tk... Hello wxWidgets

Related:
PyLT - Scratching My Itch - New Web Performance/Load Test Tool (Open Source) 

(Update: PyLT has been renamed to Pylot)

I have started development on a new web performance/load testing tool.  It is targeted at testing Web Services.

Here is some Q&A with myself:

You know you are reinventing the wheel, right?

Yes, I know.  There are already open source web load testing tools available (OpenSTA, JMeter, Grinder, WebLOAD, etc).  I have used all of these as well as proprietary tools for years.  I am a performance engineer and I feel like I need a tool set that I am intimately familiar with.  I need the ability to easily alter and tweak the tool at will.  I don't have the time, budget, or patience enough to wait on vendors when I need something.  I also want a tool that is fun to hack and adapt.  For this, I need to understand the code base deeply.

What language are you using?

Python.  The initial GUI uses Tk, but this may be changed down the road. I use Python's threading module for concurrency. If this doesn't scale well enough, I will be exploring other models of concurrency (perhaps generator based coroutines).

Why do you think you can write a tool like this?

I have worked in performance testing for nearly 10 years.  I have written many tools that work with various protocols to do distributed load generation and testing.  Creating a simple HTTP load generator is sort of my Hello World 2.0 for each language I try (I have written these from scratch in Python, Perl, Java, and C#).  This tool takes that basic concept and organizes it into a robust application.

Will it be Free and Open Source?

Of course!  Licensed under GNU GPL.

For an early look, check out the source repository at:  http://pylt.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

More details to come.

-Corey