Created attachment 3222 [details] patch For long running tasks like compiling qt it might be interesting to know when the task has been started. Patch prints this information by using the %X modifier (locale dependent presentation of time without date).
I like this idea but I think there is a better thing to do which is to show task elapsed time. If we display the start time, the next thing the user will manually do is look at the current time and compare so we may as well do it for them. I'll send such a patch to bitbake-devel.
Showing the elapsed time means that display must be refreshed periodically.
(In reply to comment #2) > Showing the elapsed time means that display must be refreshed periodically. Which we already do due to the progress changes anyway so this doesn't really add that much overhead. I did rate limit it to 5s rather than 1s intervals to try and reduce the refresh problem. http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=0d76de85bd2fa8fc6b0a3a5a65f2817a5d0b2186
Sorry, have to reopen this. With the change, highlighting the terminal tab happens constantly, whereas previously it was highlighted only when a task has been finished. For people running long tasks in a edit-rib-debug cycle (i.e. me) that is an unpleasant regresssion, as now the terminal tab has to be polled to see if the task is done yet, whereas previously I could just glance at it while doing other stuff in a different tab.
Okay, I found that the terminal provides a workaround for this. Let's open a separate issue for UI notifications using d-bus.