The quietness of preupgrade

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2010-07-07 at 21:56 -0400, Robert Myers wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 7:22 PM, Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net>
> wrote:
>         
>         It really would be helpful if developers could make sure
>         that some kind of message, even if it is just a row of dots,
>         comes up from time to time.
> 
> 
> The most general response to your request would appear to require
> violation of the Halting Theorem.  I think you could force a dot with
> an interrupt, but it wouldn't really tell you anything.  The program
> could still be hung.
> 
> 
> As it is, the problem is even more complicated than what is
> contemplated by the Halting Theorem, since an installer depends on
> expected responses from hardware.  If the response never comes...
> 
> 
> You could be getting dot dot dot, and it wouldn't mean a thing.  Sort
> of like waiting for Godot.
> 
> 
> If some poor soul at Microsoft couldn't deliver a version of Vista
> that reassured Steve Ballmer (who allegedly throws furniture) that
> wonderful new Vista was actually doing something while he sat there
> and waited with an important customer, do you think this problem will
> be solved by the FOSS community?
----
this has nothing to do with whatever MS does or doesn't do - we are
simple creatures and comforted with simple things like some indication
of progress.

I agree with Ed - file an RFE against preupgrade for progress indicators
along the way (though I do remember seeing progress indications when
under GTK so I gather this is after reboot and during automatic
installation phase and it probably was already contemplated).

Craig



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