The current implementations of MarshalJSON and MarshalText use
time.Format which returns a string (converted from a byte slice),
only to convert it back to a byte slice.
Avoid the conversion (and thus an allocation) by directly appending
the formatted time to a preallocated byte slice, using the new
AppendFormat function, introduced in golang.org/cl/1760.
This reduces the allocations done in Marshal[Text|JSON] by 50%.
benchmark old ns/op new ns/op delta
BenchmarkMarshalJSON 626 507 -19.01%
BenchmarkMarshalText 598 511 -14.55%
benchmark old allocs new allocs delta
BenchmarkMarshalJSON 2 1 -50.00%
BenchmarkMarshalText 2 1 -50.00%
benchmark old bytes new bytes delta
BenchmarkMarshalJSON 96 48 -50.00%
BenchmarkMarshalText 96 48 -50.00%