Re: New progress meters

[Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>]

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@lists.openembedded.org on
>> behalf of Paul Eggleton" <bitbake-devel-bounces@lists.openembedded.org on
>>
>> behalf of paul.eggleton@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?


-- 
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Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
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