Drupal's already best-in-class performance is about to get even better thanks to a groundbreaking collaboration between Google and Tag1 Consulting. The initiative led by core release manager Nathaniel Catchpole (catch) integrates automated performance testing directly into the Drupal development process. Faster sites are proven to get more page views, drive more revenue, and increase user satisfaction - making Drupal better than ever.

At this BoF we will do a live demo, explain the basics of Gander and show you how to use it for Drupal Core development and on your own site. We will also talk about the benefits, how we got here, where we go from here, and solicit your feedback.

For Drupal Core, the goal is to detect problems much earlier in the lifecycle when it's easier to find and address them. By running performance testing frequently using automation we eliminate both regressions and reliance on a few overworked framework managers who currently do this manually and infrequently.

Like Drupal’s QA system, the automated performance testing framework is integrated into Drupal core and the core development process, uses tools that we are already familiar with (PHPUnit) and is already available to anyone. The upcoming beta release will test active Drupal core branches on an hourly basis, publicly reporting results. In the future we would like to expand it to run more tests, test core merge requests, and even allow maintainers of contributed modules to leverage it. As the framework is already part of the core any Drupal user/developer can also start using it on their project today.

End-users frequently build on top of Drupal, reducing performance and negatively impacting business outcomes (page views, time on site, revenue, etc.) - but they often aren’t aware of this unless the problems are glaring. This open source performance testing framework is a new tool which they can use to make sure that the enhancements they make to the platform don’t negatively affect the performance of their site. Few organizations could fund, build or maintain a tool like this. Due to the collaboration between Google and Tag1 Consulting we made it possible for anyone to adopt it and made sure that it will be easy to maintain long term, which is very important for the entire Drupal community.

https://www.tag1consulting.com/blog/gander-future-drupal-performance-an…

BoF