Quality of life improvements for using benchmarks

.gitignore

@@ -135,3 +135,7 @@ dmypy.json
 
 # Mac OS
 .DS_Store
+
+# Airspeed Velocity performance results
+_results/
+_html/

docs/practices/ci_benchmarking.rst

@@ -118,27 +118,42 @@ Running ASV locally
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
 You may want to run ``asv`` locally, during development. Verify that it has been 
-properly installed on your environment by executing the following command. It runs 
-the benchmarking suite for your most recent commit.
+properly installed on your environment by executing the following command. There 
+are several questions you'll be asked the first time, and you may need to instal 
+a new python venv. When your local environment is properly configured, it runs 
+the benchmarking suite for your most recent commit
 
 .. code:: bash
 
+    >> cd benchmarks
     >> asv run
 
-Having benchmarks for several revisions, you may compare them with ease.
+You will need to commit changes locally for the new code to be picked up by ASV.
+Having benchmarks for several revisions, you can find them and compare them with ease.
 
 .. code:: bash
 
-    >> asv compare revision1 revision2
+    >>asv show
+      Commits with results:
+
+      Machine    : XPS8104-L
+      Environment: virtualenv-py3.10-Cython-build-packaging
+
+          d02787f1
+          5dd46d87
+    >> asv compare d02787f1 5dd46d87
 
 The commands use a very flexible and powerful syntax which allows to specify a range 
 of commits and even tags. For more information visit ASV's
 `Benchmarking section <https://asv.readthedocs.io/en/stable/using.html#benchmarking>`_.
 
+Since you've had to create many commits while working on benchmarks, be sure
+to squash before merging to main!
+
 Writing benchmarks
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
-Performance is measured for suites defined under ``benchmarks/benchmarks``.
+Performance is measured for suites defined under ``benchmarks``.
 
 The functions benchmarked must follow a predefined prefix.
 

python-project-template/{% if include_benchmarks %}benchmarks{% endif %}/asv.conf.json.jinja

@@ -46,16 +46,16 @@
     },
     // The directory (relative to the current directory) that benchmarks are
     // stored in. If not provided, defaults to "benchmarks".
-    "benchmark_dir": "benchmarks",
+    "benchmark_dir": ".",
     // The directory (relative to the current directory) to cache the Python
     // environments in. If not provided, defaults to "env".
     "env_dir": "env",
     // The directory (relative to the current directory) that raw benchmark
     // results are stored in. If not provided, defaults to "results".
-    "results_dir": "results",
+    "results_dir": "_results",
     // The directory (relative to the current directory) that the html tree
     // should be written to. If not provided, defaults to "html".
-    "html_dir": "html",
+    "html_dir": "_html",
     // The number of characters to retain in the commit hashes.
     // "hash_length": 8,
     // `asv` will cache wheels of the recent builds in each