ProgressReports should report start/finish times.

[ggainey]

ProgressReports are used for tasks that have multiple parts, so you can tell how much they're doing/have done. When debugging large tasks (e.g., a sync of the one Really Big Repo), it would be handy to be able to see which subsection of the task took the bulk of the time, before digging into the logs.

Currently, for example, a sync-task has a progres--report-section that looks like this:

"progress_reports": [
    {
      "message": "Downloading Metadata Files",
      "code": "sync.downloading.metadata",
      "state": "completed",
      "total": null,
      "done": 6,
      "suffix": null
    },
    {
      "message": "Skipping Packages",
      "code": "sync.skipped.packages",
      "state": "completed",
      "total": 0,
      "done": 0,
      "suffix": null
    },
    {
      "message": "Parsed Advisories",
      "code": "sync.parsing.advisories",
      "state": "completed",
      "total": 4565,
      "done": 4565,
      "suffix": null
    },
    {
      "message": "Parsed Packages",
      "code": "sync.parsing.packages",
      "state": "completed",
      "total": 20851,
      "done": 20851,
      "suffix": null
    },
    {
      "message": "Parsed Comps",
      "code": "sync.parsing.comps",
      "state": "completed",
      "total": 23,
      "done": 23,
      "suffix": null
    },
    {
      "message": "Downloading Artifacts",
      "code": "sync.downloading.artifacts",
      "state": "completed",
      "total": null,
      "done": 0,
      "suffix": null
    },
    {
      "message": "Associating Content",
      "code": "associating.content",
      "state": "completed",
      "total": null,
      "done": 0,
      "suffix": null
    }

It would be very handy if it had a started_at: that was the ProgRpt's create-time (or maybe when state changed to running?) and a finished_at: that was filled in when the state changed to completed. This would make it possible to see at a glance that, for example, "oh, all the time was in 'Downloading Artifacts' - I need to check network-speed".

[mdellweg]

The thing is that we designed our most interesting (long running tasks) in a pipeline manner. They do not perform one step after another, but all at the same time. I fear these times would be rather meaningless.

[ggainey]

It's not perfect, surely. But not everything happens in the sync-pipeline - in fact, some parts of the sync-pipeline happen not-concurrently, in more complicated cases like pulp_rpm. orphan-cleanup and import/export both use multiple progress-reports in ways that this might give some useful insights.

In any event - it can be useful, depending on the circumstancesm, and isn't a very intrusive change.

[mdellweg]

Sure, some information may be better than none.
Should we add a docs page that states: "These times may absolutely include waiting on other pieces of the same task or even external resources. You many need an engineer to understand that they tell you little to nothing."

I'm not saying we shouldn't do this. I just fear that this can potentially increase the support surface.