[bitbake-devel] New progress meters

[Paul Eggleton]

On Tue, 19 Jul 2016 09:43:16 Barros Pena, Belen wrote:
> On 19/07/2016 10:16, "bitbake-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org on
> behalf of Paul Eggleton" <bitbake-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org on
> 
> behalf of paul.eggleton at linux.intel.com> wrote:
> >Hi Gary,
> >
> >On Tue, 19 Jul 2016 08:33:54 Gary Thomas wrote:
> >> I quite like the new progress meters, but they seem to not be very
> >> accurate.  I was just rebuilding webkitgtk and got this:
> >> 
> >> 0: webkitgtk-2.12.3-r0 do_compile (pid 30494)  96%
> >> 
> >> |#######################################  | ETA:  0:02:58
> >> 
> >> Sadly, it sat there, waffling between 02:58 and 03:44 for about
> >> 10 minutes...
> >> 
> >> * How is this [estimate] calculated?
> >> * Should I be concerned when it's not accurate (or even moving)?
> >
> >There are a few different types of progress handling for different types
> >of tasks. To be specific in this example, for recipes that inherit cmake
> >during do_compile we report the progress that the cmake-produced makefile
> >prints out. The ETA, which is implemented in the python-progressbar code we
> >are using is kind of a rolling average calculated based on recent progress,
> >so it's possible it's inaccurate in this instance if there are places where
> >it stalls. Python-progressbar has an alternative ETA mode which we could
> >try, but to be honest when the progress value sent to it isn't evenly
> >apportioned with respect to time and we don't have any weighting
> >information, there's not a lot anyone can do to estimate time remaining
> >accurately. If it's truly bothersome we could just turn off the ETA display
> >I suppose.
> 
> Big caveat: this is just my opinion. Displaying information we are not
> sure is accurate is probably not a good idea: it disconcerts people,
> creates false expectations and ultimately undermines trust on the system.
> 
> If you are not sure the ETA is reliable, I would remove it.
> 
> Just my 2c.

Right, I see your point - the entire reason I added this was to give the user 
some reassurance about the progress and if it's misleading then it does the 
opposite. I think I will just remove it.

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre