test 3 installation comments/questions

[Michael Fulbright]

On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 08:56, Gene C. wrote:

> 1.  The "Remaining time" does not change very frequently (15->8->6->4->2) and 
> thus gives little feedback comfort.
> 
You're spending way too much time watching the install. Go get something
refreshing to drink :)

Seriously I spent a day or two profiling lots of install cases and there
is no obvious way to get the time accurate.  The solution I switched to
gives a good faith initial estimate that should be within 15%.  Giving
any more information is like measuring the circumference of a circle to
2 significant digits, then reporting the the radius to 5.  If you don't
thunk the estimated time to some value it will bounce up and down alot,
which was the previous behavior that was COMPLETELY wrong. The initial
time would be 3 minutes, and the install would take >10.  So in that
regard I feel this is better.  Its a first pass however so it can be
improved I'm sure.

I do agree there is the issue of how do you let the user know the
installer hasn't fallen over. I got rid of the individual package
progress bar because it basically flashes left to right in about 1
seconds for 90% of the packages and is visually noisy.  Perhaps there is
another way to give intra-package feedback I haven't thought of.

Michael Fulbright
msf at redhat.com