[bitbake-devel] New progress meters

[Paul Eggleton]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2016 07:34:51 Gary Thomas wrote:
> On 2016-07-19 23:12, Paul Eggleton wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Maybe leave the progress bar (which I do find useful), but
> remove the ETA?

Right - I guess it wasn't clear from what I wrote, but that's what I meant.

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre