On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Anas Nashif <[email protected]> wrote: > 5 update bundles available but every bundle consists of multiple packages. > This is clearly a UI problem that needs some attention. > >> >> 4. After a few minutes at half-way the progress bar leaped all the way to the >> right, and a pop-up window told me that the update had completed >> successfully. >> > > Progress bar are never accurate :(
So perhaps here bundles 1, 2, 4, 5 were very small, and bundle 3 had the bulk of the work. Thus the progress bar went rapidly to 40% when the first two bundles completed. Then sat there for a long time while bundle 3 was processed. Once bundle 3 was complete it went to 60% and then it jumped quickly to the end as the small bundles 4 & 5 were processed? Progress bars that don't show progress are a pet peeve of mine. The worst are the ones that reset to zero after getting to 100%, and then begin inching across the screen again. Which leaves me with no idea how long the task will take because having done the reset to zero once there is no way to tell how many times it may be repeated. > The operation here consists of downloading delta rpms, applying them and > installing them at the end. > This is very difficult to estimate with the progress bar. If there is a quick way to get an estimate of how many files will be touched, then that might serve as a good heuristic - update times are usually dominated by the time taken for synchronous writes to file system meta-data. You'd also need to make the estimates based in the packages within each bundle and update the progress bar as each sub-task completes. Having just five items leaves the progress too vulnerable to large variations between the items. Splitting across a bigger number will even out the bumps. If that isn't practical (or doesn't do any better) - then just abandon the progress bar. I'd rather just have a spinning helicopter that doesn't pretend to know when the update will complete than a lying progress bar that provides false information. -Tony _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
