TL;DR: By taking Ubuntu’s jq source code and recompiling it, performance can be improved up to 90%. The process involves rebuilding the program with different compilers, optimization levels, and allocators. A surprising finding is that using mimalloc as the allocator can result in a 44% speed increase. Rebuilding jq with mimalloc makes it nearly twice as fast as the Ubuntu binary package. This optimized version of jq offers impressive speed improvements, completing tasks in a fraction of the time compared to the standard package. Overall, these results show the potential for significant performance enhancements with simple adjustments.
https://gist.github.com/jwbee/7e8b27e298de8bbbf8abfa4c232db097