Move TracerSettings helper methods to TestHelpers project

[andrewlock]

Summary of changes

Move the TracerSettings.Create() methods which are only there for testing convenience into the TestHelpers project

Reason for change

They don't need to be in the main binary

Implementation details

• Moved the settings to the TestHelpers project
• Created them as static extension members, so the call-site doesn't change at all (partially as an experiment)
• Fixed a culture bug @vandonr was running into

Test coverage

Covered by existing

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Benchmarks

Benchmark execution time: 2026-03-27 15:23:15

Comparing candidate commit c43d256 in PR branch andrew/move-function with baseline commit 017e910 in branch master.

Found 5 performance improvements and 9 performance regressions! Performance is the same for 259 metrics, 15 unstable metrics.

Explanation

This is an A/B test comparing a candidate commit's performance against that of a baseline commit. Performance changes are noted in the tables below as:

• 🟩 = significantly better candidate vs. baseline
• 🟥 = significantly worse candidate vs. baseline

We compute a confidence interval (CI) over the relative difference of means between metrics from the candidate and baseline commits, considering the baseline as the reference.

If the CI is entirely outside the configured SIGNIFICANT_IMPACT_THRESHOLD (or the deprecated UNCONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD), the change is considered significant.

Feel free to reach out to #apm-benchmarking-platform on Slack if you have any questions.

More details about the CI and significant changes

You can imagine this CI as a range of values that is likely to contain the true difference of means between the candidate and baseline commits.

CIs of the difference of means are often centered around 0%, because often changes are not that big:

---------------------------------(------|---^--------)-------------------------------->
                              -0.6%    0%  0.3%     +1.2%
                                 |          |        |
         lower bound of the CI --'          |        |
sample mean (center of the CI) -------------'        |
         upper bound of the CI ----------------------'

As described above, a change is considered significant if the CI is entirely outside the configured SIGNIFICANT_IMPACT_THRESHOLD (or the deprecated UNCONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD).

For instance, for an execution time metric, this confidence interval indicates a significantly worse performance:

----------------------------------------|---------|---(---------^---------)---------->
                                       0%        1%  1.3%      2.2%      3.1%
                                                  |   |         |         |
       significant impact threshold --------------'   |         |         |
                      lower bound of CI --------------'         |         |
       sample mean (center of the CI) --------------------------'         |
                      upper bound of CI ----------------------------------'

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.ActivityBenchmark.StartStopWithChild netcoreapp3.1

• 🟥 throughput [-5950.732op/s; -4781.249op/s] or [-6.381%; -5.127%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.AgentWriterBenchmark.WriteAndFlushEnrichedTraces netcoreapp3.1

• 🟥 execution_time [+88.876ms; +89.007ms] or [+79.815%; +79.933%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.Asm.AppSecBodyBenchmark.AllCycleSimpleBody netcoreapp3.1

• 🟥 execution_time [+19.000ms; +25.217ms] or [+9.652%; +12.810%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.Asm.AppSecBodyBenchmark.ObjectExtractorMoreComplexBody net6.0

• 🟩 execution_time [-16.583ms; -13.098ms] or [-7.744%; -6.117%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.Asm.AppSecBodyBenchmark.ObjectExtractorSimpleBody netcoreapp3.1

• 🟥 execution_time [+10.098ms; +16.391ms] or [+5.018%; +8.145%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.CIVisibilityProtocolWriterBenchmark.WriteAndFlushEnrichedTraces net472

• 🟩 execution_time [-32.281ms; -29.161ms] or [-14.323%; -12.939%]
• 🟩 throughput [+77.513op/s; +94.361op/s] or [+7.278%; +8.860%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.CIVisibilityProtocolWriterBenchmark.WriteAndFlushEnrichedTraces netcoreapp3.1

• 🟥 execution_time [+23.894ms; +25.412ms] or [+15.528%; +16.514%]
• 🟥 throughput [-221.910op/s; -208.816op/s] or [-14.228%; -13.388%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.CharSliceBenchmark.OptimizedCharSliceWithPool net6.0

• 🟥 execution_time [+105.351µs; +110.542µs] or [+10.403%; +10.915%]
• 🟥 throughput [-97.435op/s; -92.794op/s] or [-9.868%; -9.397%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.Iast.StringAspectsBenchmark.StringConcatAspectBenchmark net6.0

• 🟥 allocated_mem [+17.851KB; +17.888KB] or [+6.915%; +6.930%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.Log4netBenchmark.EnrichedLog netcoreapp3.1

• 🟩 execution_time [-37.493ms; -35.106ms] or [-18.610%; -17.426%]

scenario:Benchmarks.Trace.SingleSpanAspNetCoreBenchmark.SingleSpanAspNetCore net6.0

• 🟩 execution_time [-17.551ms; -16.116ms] or [-17.752%; -16.301%]