Add benchmarking

[Shane32]

Summary

This PR adds a benchmarking project to the solution so that performance gains during optimizations may be analyzed.

What existing problem does the pull request solve?

It is difficult to quantify the gains from applying performance optimizations without benchmarks.

Sample Output

BenchmarkDotNet v0.13.12, Windows 10 (10.0.19045.4291/22H2/2022Update)
13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900K, 1 CPU, 32 logical and 24 physical cores
.NET SDK 8.0.202
  [Host]     : .NET 8.0.3 (8.0.324.11423), X64 RyuJIT AVX2
  DefaultJob : .NET 8.0.3 (8.0.324.11423), X64 RyuJIT AVX2

Method	Mean	Error	StdDev	Gen0	Gen1	Allocated
CreateQRCode	245.4 us	4.88 us	5.80 us	17.0898	0.2441	317.99 KB
CreateQRCodeLong	7,531.1 us	34.13 us	31.92 us	265.6250	15.6250	4920.13 KB

Legend

Term	Description
Mean	Arithmetic mean of all measurements
Error	Half of 99.9% confidence interval
StdDev	Standard deviation of all measurements
Gen0	GC Generation 0 collects per 1000 operations
Gen1	GC Generation 1 collects per 1000 operations
Allocated	Allocated memory per single operation (managed only, inclusive, 1KB = 1024B)
1 us	1 Microsecond (0.000001 sec)

Observations

Creating the QR code uses a lot of RAM, which triggers garbage collections more frequently. Minimizing the number of garbage collections through a more efficient QR code algorithm can significantly enhance the stability and performance of an ASP.NET Core application. By optimizing the QR code generation process, the application can manage memory better, reduce latency, and handle higher user loads with greater reliability, ultimately improving user experience and application scalability.

Similar benefits would be realized for other targets, such as blazor/webassembly.

Notes

This project targets .NET 8 so that any performance benefits are measured for a developer targeting the latest version of .NET. The compilation targets for the main project have not changed; however, the .NET 8 SDK was added to the CI workflows so that building the solution does not cause a build error.

[codebude]

Hi @Shane32 , you rock it! That's another great PR. Thanks for your support in this project.

[codebude]

Updated release notes: https://github.com/codebude/QRCoder/wiki/Release-Notes/_compare/7252ef85841d5d905c437f397ee9e96d5776b144...e5c1a261e61f0c524dcef2b3827872fdc395a07e

[codebude]

Hi @Shane32 seems like this PR broke the CI scripts. Can you have a look?
https://github.com/codebude/QRCoder/actions/runs/8884442673/job/24413893321

Run dotnet restore
  dotnet restore
  shell: C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.EXE -command ". '{0}'"
  env:
    GH_PKG_SEC: ***
    DOTNET_ROOT: C:\Program Files\dotnet
  Determining projects to restore...
Error: C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\7.0.[4](https://github.com/codebude/QRCoder/actions/runs/8884442673/job/24413893321#step:4:4)08\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\targets\Microsoft.NET.TargetFrameworkInference.targets(160,[5](https://github.com/codebude/QRCoder/actions/runs/8884442673/job/24413893321#step:4:5)): error NETSDK1045: The current .NET SDK does not support targeting .NET 8.0.  Either target .NET [7](https://github.com/codebude/QRCoder/actions/runs/8884442673/job/24413893321#step:4:8).0 or lower, or use a version of the .NET SDK that supports .NET [8](https://github.com/codebude/QRCoder/actions/runs/8884442673/job/24413893321#step:4:9).0. Download the .NET SDK from https://aka.ms/dotnet/download [D:\a\QRCoder\QRCoder\QRCoderBenchmarks\QRCoderBenchmarks.csproj]
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

[Shane32]

No problem. My mistake; I added the .NET 8 SDK twice instead of three times to those scripts.