Megatest

Every #{shell ...} command is processed in every target from every included file even if the target is not the one being run, or a simple -list-targets is given on the command line.

To make matters worse, when running a regression, not only does the main megatest "mtest" call processes runconfigs, so does any server started by the regression run.

And if it takes a LONG time to process the runconfigs, the regression run will spend a lot of time waiting for the server to start. Every single call to megatest, whether its to start the regression, or start a server, or whatever, is subject to the time it takes to process the runconfig files.

The parsing of runconfigs should happen 1 time per session, and the evaluation of value should only happen 1 time and when its needed/used (there should not be a global evaluation of all parameters across all targets unless there is some kind of dump operation occurring).

While I appreciate that there was some original reason/intent for re-parsing the runconfigs the entire process is leading to a substantial performance issues in regression runs. Even if there is a need to re-evaluate a variable value, there should be a means of indicating so, like:

VAR #{eval ...}

Something needs to be done to improve performance of reading the runconfigs.