Show run status and/or running time recent command or cell even when the cell is collapsed

[brettcannon]

Discussed in microsoft/vscode-python#15772

^{Originally posted by ihnorton March 24, 2021}
When working in the interactive window, I may run a cell and then do other things if I expect the evaluation to take substantial time; later I come back to check. If the call is still running after an "unreasonable" amount of time, I would likely kill it.

For the above workflow, it would be useful to have a display of the elapsed time for the most recently evaluated cell, perhaps after some minimum time has passed (maybe in place of the current spinning asterisk [*]?)

Please note that this feature request is distinct from IPython magic like %time: those work great, but they only give the elapsed time after the call has completed. I would like a timer that is independent of the kernel and shows the elapsed time since something was sent to the kernel.

[rchiodo]

We sort of already have this in the new interactive window:

You just have to expand the cell.

Doesn't seem as useful though because the IW scrolls the output so you can't see the time without scrolling up.

[joyceerhl]

Perhaps we can consider always displaying the cell status bar even when a cell is collapsed? We already did this for the cell toolbar in this past iteration so that you don't have to expand a cell to delete it.

[amunger]

completed