New npm progress indicator

[iarna]

As discussed elsewhere we want a better progress indicator than a spinner or logs. The multi-stage installer branch brings this. The current iteration of the indicator looks like this:

So here we can see that we're extracting the form-data module. ("fetch" is a bit misleading here, that'll be corrected.) The last log entry section was gunzTarPerm, which gives you a pretty good idea of what's going on. The little clock just before the bar spins every time a log line would have been printed at a higher log level.

Remaining work:

• Fix progress bar section reporting (eg, "fetch" in the screenshot). This just involves making each of the new stages "tick" the progress bar at least once.
• Fix progress bar one way or another such that last 50% doesn't finish neigh instantly
• Make new progress bar obey --unicode
• There should be a facility for disabling the progress bar via config, like spin=false, maybe actually using spin…

And possibly:

• Deeper integration of progress bar into other related tasks, eg, cache, request, rimraf, etc

See also: #1257, #5340, #6420

[asbjornenge]

Looks good 👍 🚀

[dominictarr]

yay

[tkellen]

woo

[iarna]

Closing this as fixed in npm/npm#multi-stage

[manpages]

Do these changes have something to do with problems with progress bar people across distros started to experience?

Such as

installing
install flags: install SHELL=/nix/store/kz4aii9y5kdxilxrjdz55gdr0piziwcz-bash-4.3-p33/bin/bash    
v0.13.0-pre
net.js:166
        throw errnoException(err, 'setBlocking');
              ^
Error: setBlocking ENOSYS
    at exports._errnoException (util.js:748:11)
    at new Socket (net.js:166:15)
    at createWritableStdioStream (node.js:466:18)
    at process.stderr (node.js:520:16)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/nix/store/lzns9av4iwjzdm81l3g3dgdklrmbvyfb-nodejs-0.12.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npmlog/node_modules/gauge/progress-bar.js:9:28)
    at Module._compile (module.js:462:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:480:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
    at Module.require (module.js:367:17)
Makefile:5: recipe for target 'all' failed

Maybe the case is that I spawn npm process without running terminal emulator.

Have you tested new progress bar without terminal emulator running? With very thin terminal emulator (like 1-2 characters wide)?

UPD: I'm pretty sure it's the case; didn't do commit bisection though.

[iarna]

@manpages: Well, seeing is it hasn't actually been released, unless you're using a version from git directly, then no.

[iarna]

@manpages The gauge module did get brought in with an npmlog update a bit ago, but it's not actually being used at all as yet.

It looks like accessing the process.stderr file handle (while not actualy using it) is somehow causing a crash for you. I don't understand how that's possible– I'd definitely need more information (eg an npm-debug.log) in order to track that down. If this is still an issue for you and you'd like progress on it, please open a NEW issue with whatever diagnostics you have available. Thank you!