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Ensure MediaWiki-Core-Profiler works with php-xhprof 2.x (PHP 8.3)
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Description

Background

The Profiler in MediaWiki core (owned by MPT per mw:Maintainers) is what powers collecting the call graph and memory usage during a request to ease local development (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Profiling), and in production via WikimediaDebug (https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikimediaDebug#XHGui_profiling).

It has been stable for 10 years and is unlikely to need changes, so this task is mainly to ensure it works on PHP 8.3, and by proxy of testing that, this task is about sharing knowledge inside the platform about how other MW developers use/depend on this, and for team members that haven't used it before, to be famliair with how to install and use it locally.

This task

MediaWiki core supports php-xhprof 0.9 and its fork php-tideways-xhprof. The current version of php-xhprof is 2.x, which we have not tested before. As part of the PHP 8.1 to PHP 8.3 upgrade, we will be switching from the abandoned php-tideways-xhprof package to the php-xhprof 2.x package. I wrote more details and reasons for this package choice at T398245#10965108.

This task represents the MwEng support part of Prep for WMF / 1. Create Debian packages step in the new process (https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Krinkle/PHP_Upgrade_Process), which is being carried out by SRE in the parent task as part of FY2-26 WE6.4.2: PHP 8.3 upgrade.

Scope

  • Understand and verify status quo
    • On your local dev env with PHP 8.1 and tideways_xhprof, play with $wgProfiler in LocalSettings.php. Documentation: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Profiling.
    • Generate the "text" output on a page view, which should print a list of function call counts and percentage time spent in an HTML comment
    • Generate the "text" output via a CLI maintenance script.
  • Switch your local dev temporarily to php8.4 and install xhprof from PECL (probably easiest with Quickstart, as opposed to Docker-based dev envs).
  • Generate the same outputs. Or if not working, investigate the upstream changelog, and update the ProfilerXhrof subclass as-needed to ensure it is compatible and outputs the same data as before.
  • Update https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Profiling as-needed with any findings about how to install, enable, and use the feature. In particular, we will now be recommending php-xhprof instead of php-tideways-xhprof, because Tideways has indicated they no longer maintain this (https://github.com/tideways/php-xhprof-extension/).

Details

Other Assignee
• matmarex

Related Objects
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StatusSubtypeAssignedTask
 OpenNoneT376276 PHP 8.4: Implicitly nullable parameter declarations deprecated
 OpenNoneT379587 PHP 8.4: Implicitly nullable parameter declarations deprecated in 3rd party vendor libs
 OpenReedyT378424 PHP 8.4: Implicitly nullable parameter declarations deprecated in qrcode vendor libs
 OpenNoneT366644 Raise MediaWiki's MariaDB requirement to 10.6
 OpenNoneT366646 Raise Quibble jobs' tested version of MariaDB to 10.6
 OpenNoneT405346 Remove lcobucci/clock (or replacement) post WMF PHP 8.3 upgrade
 OpenNoneT405344 Upgrade web-auth/webauthn-lib to >= 5.2.2
 OpenNoneT358666 Drop PHP 8.1 support from MediaWiki
 OpenNoneT358667 Drop PHP 8.2 support from MediaWiki
 OpenKrinkleT360995 Migrate Wikimedia production from PHP 8.1 to PHP 8.3
 ResolvedJdforrester-WMFT398491 Move CI images to WMF PHP 8.3 packages
 ResolvedScott_FrenchT401254 Upgrade mw-debug/next to PHP 8.3
 ResolvedScott_FrenchT401252 Configure title-case consistency mapping for PHP 8.1 -> 8.3 transition
 ResolvedScott_FrenchT399884 Configure production MediaWiki image builds for PHP 8.3
 ResolvedScott_FrenchT403284 Migrate production Shellbox services to PHP 8.3
 ResolvedScott_FrenchT403283 Prepare PHP 8.3 service images for Shellbox
 ResolvedScott_FrenchT398246 Prepare PHP 8.3 production images
 ResolvedScott_FrenchT398245 Prepare WMF PHP 8.3 packages for bullseye
 OpenNoneT348379 Migrate use of php-tideways_xhprof to php-xhprof
 ResolvedKrinkleT400109 Ensure MediaWiki-Core-Profiler works with php-xhprof 2.x (PHP 8.3)

Event Timeline

Krinkle created this task.Jul 21 2025, 10:26 PM
Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptJul 21 2025, 10:26 PM
Krinkle added a project: MediaWiki-Engineering.Jul 21 2025, 10:30 PM
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)
Krinkle moved this task from Inbox, needs triage to MW Platform Team on the MediaWiki-Engineering board.
Krinkle added a subscriber: MSantos.
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)Jul 21 2025, 10:35 PM
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)Jul 21 2025, 10:58 PM
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)Jul 21 2025, 11:03 PM
Scott_French mentioned this in T398245: Prepare WMF PHP 8.3 packages for bullseye.Jul 22 2025, 3:35 PM
JTweed-WMF added a project: PHP 8.3 support.Jul 28 2025, 2:59 PM
JTweed-WMF moved this task from Inbox, needs triage to Needs refinement on the MediaWiki-Platform-Team board.
JTweed-WMF moved this task from Needs refinement to Next on the MediaWiki-Platform-Team board.
Krinkle assigned this task to • matmarex.Jul 28 2025, 11:36 PM

We'll try to get this done this week so that we can unblock the next step in the PHP upgrade process.

Krinkle claimed this task.Jul 29 2025, 5:51 PM
Krinkle triaged this task as Medium priority.
Krinkle updated Other Assignee, added: • matmarex.
Krinkle added a subscriber: • matmarex.
Krinkle added a parent task: T348379: Migrate use of php-tideways_xhprof to php-xhprof.Jul 29 2025, 7:57 PM
Krinkle added a comment.Jul 29 2025, 8:38 PM

I'm using PHP 8.1 from Homebrew on macOS with MW-Quickstart. The tideways_xhprof extension (https://github.com/tideways/php-xhprof-extension) is not published on pecl.php.net and is not available as a Homebrew package. (Tideways does maintain a Homebrew tap at https://github.com/tideways/homebrew-profiler/, but this is for installing the proprietary php-tideways extension, not the open source php-tideways_xhprof.)

So, I'll install it from source using the instructions in the repository's readme, which provisions tideways_xhprof.so to a directory like /opt/homebrew/Cellar/php@8.1/8.1.XX/pecl/20XX/.

You can set extension=tideways_xhprof.so in your main php.ini to install it globally, or call php -d extension=tideways_xhprof.so instead of php anywhere to use it temporarily. I'll be doing the latter, since I generally want to use Excimer and XHProf, not Tideways.

$ php -d extension=tideways_xhprof.so -i | grep -A10 xhprof
tideways_xhprof

Version => 5.0.4
Clock Source => mach

Tideways is a PHP Profiler, Monitoring and Exception Tracking Software.

Enable tideways_xhprof before restarting composer serve:

--- a/composer.json
+++ b/composer.json
@@ -156,7 +156,7 @@
            "@putenv MW_LOG_DIR=logs",
            "@putenv MW_LOG_STDERR=1",
            "@putenv PHP_CLI_SERVER_WORKERS=8",
-           "@php -S 127.0.0.1:4000"
+           "@php -d extension=tideways_xhprof.so -S 127.0.0.1:4000"
        ],

Enabling $wgProfiler in LocalSettings, based on the docs:

if ( extension_loaded( 'tideways_xhprof' ) ) {
	if ( isset( $_GET['forceprofile'] ) || PHP_SAPI === 'cli' ) {
		$wgProfiler = [
			'class'  => ProfilerXhprof::class,
			'flags'  => TIDEWAYS_XHPROF_FLAGS_CPU | TIDEWAYS_XHPROF_FLAGS_NO_BUILTINS,
			'output' => 'text',
			'thresholdMs' => 0.001, // lower threshold to show stuff on fast requests too
			'running' => true, // profile Setup.php too
		];
		tideways_xhprof_enable( TIDEWAYS_XHPROF_FLAGS_CPU | TIDEWAYS_XHPROF_FLAGS_NO_BUILTINS );
	}
}

Which yields the following at http://localhost:4000/load.php?forceprofile=1

100.00% 0.015      1 - main()
 33.33% 0.005      2 - {closure}
 33.33% 0.005     11 - MediaWiki\MediaWikiServices::getInstance
 33.33% 0.005    594 - AutoLoader::autoload@1
 33.33% 0.005    115 - AutoLoader::autoload

Then, switching back to PHP 8.4:

brew unlink php@8.1
brew link php@8.4

... and installing the latest xhprof from pecl,
... and undoing the local composer.json change,
... and restarting my server.

$ php --version
PHP 8.4.8 (cli) …
$ php -i | grep -A10 xhprof
xhprof

xhprof support => enabled
Version => 2.3.10

Tweaking LocalSettings to use xhprof instead of tideways_xhprof:

if ( extension_loaded( 'xhprof' ) ) {
	if ( isset( $_GET['forceprofile'] ) || PHP_SAPI === 'cli' ) {
		$wgProfiler = [
			'class'  => ProfilerXhprof::class,
			'flags'  => XHPROF_FLAGS_CPU | XHPROF_FLAGS_NO_BUILTINS,
			'output' => 'text',
			'thresholdMs' => 0.001, // lower threshold to show stuff on fast requests too
			'running' => true, // profile Setup.php too
		];
		xhprof_enable( XHPROF_FLAGS_CPU | XHPROF_FLAGS_NO_BUILTINS );
	}
}

We get the following:

100.00% 10.154     1 - main()
 38.32% 3.891      1 - MediaWiki\MediaWikiEntryPoint::run
 38.21% 3.880      1 - MediaWiki\ResourceLoader\ResourceLoaderEntryPoint::execute
  …
 32.55% 3.305      1 - {closure:/Users/krinkle/Development/mediawiki/includes/Setup.php:344}
  …
 21.39% 2.172      1 - MediaWiki\MediaWikiServices::getResourceLoader
  …
 11.87% 1.205      1 - Wikimedia\Services\ServiceContainer::loadWiringFiles
  …
  7.00% 0.711      1 - MediaWiki\ResourceLoader\ResourceLoader::respond
  …
  …
  4.42% 0.449      1 - MediaWiki\Registration\ExtensionRegistry::loadFromQueue
  4.23% 0.430    253 - MediaWiki\ResourceLoader\ResourceLoader::isValidModuleName

Which looks the same, or rather, looks better. It seems for me there was something odd about the measurements in tideways_xhprof (I think it used a unit other than milliseconds, since that PHP 8.1 response was not 0.2ms but 10ms in total, roughly the same as with PHP 8.4).

Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)Jul 29 2025, 8:38 PM
Maryann-Onyinye subscribed.Aug 3 2025, 1:46 PM
Krinkle added a comment.Aug 4 2025, 2:14 AM

Works well on the CLI as well.

$ php --version
PHP 8.3.24  …
$ php -i | grep -A1 xhprof
xhprof

xhprof support => enabled
Version => 2.3.10
…

$ php maintenance/showJobs.php --profiler=text
0
<!--
100.00% 123.587      1 - main()
 53.37% 65.954     70 - MediaWiki\MediaWikiServices::getInstance
 22.40% 27.679      1 - MediaWiki\Maintenance\MaintenanceRunner::run
 21.57% 26.657      1 - ShowJobs::execute
…
 18.48% 22.845     29 - MediaWiki\JobQueue\JobQueue::getSize
 18.47% 22.821     29 - MediaWiki\JobQueue\JobQueueDB::doGetSize
 15.23% 18.827      1 - MediaWiki\Session\SessionManager::singleton
 …
 11.37% 14.053     29 - MediaWiki\JobQueue\JobQueueDB::getReplicaDB
 11.35% 14.027     29 - MediaWiki\JobQueue\JobQueueDB::getDB
 11.05% 13.652     29 - Wikimedia\Rdbms\DatabaseFactory::create
  6.72% 8.309     29 - Wikimedia\Rdbms\Database::initConnection
  6.67% 8.248     29 - Wikimedia\Rdbms\DatabaseSqlite::open
  6.62% 8.182     87 - Wikimedia\Rdbms\Database::query
  6.25% 7.722     87 - Wikimedia\Rdbms\Database::executeQuery
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 4 2025, 2:31 AM
Krinkle closed this task as Resolved.Aug 4 2025, 1:05 PM

I've updated the install instructions at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Profiling to recommend XHProf instead of Tideways going forward, covering various installation methods and distributions.

Krinkle mentioned this in T401115: Replace php-tideways_xhprof with php-xhprof in MediaWiki-Docker.Aug 4 2025, 1:30 PM
Krinkle mentioned this in T401152: Switch wmf-config/Profiler from Tideways to XHProf.Aug 4 2025, 9:08 PM
Krinkle mentioned this in T402597: Exploratory testing on PHP 8.3 for MediaWiki Platform Team components.Aug 22 2025, 2:48 PM
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