Disable progress bar when not in an interactive terminal

[greg0ire]

Description

Progress bars are a great way to provide feedback to somebody using a Symfony command in a terminal. However, when running the same Symfony command in a cronjob, you will often get logs flooded by the output of the same progress bar. I found that in my case, checking for the TERM env variable seemed like a reliable way to do this, and I'm proposing this is done internally by Symfony, transparently.

Example

Before

if (getenv('TERM') !== false) {
    $progressBar = new ProgressBar($output);
    $callback = function () use ($progressBar): void {
        $progressBar->advance();
    };
} else {
	$callback = null;
}     
($this->import)($callback);
if (isset($progressBar)) {
    $progressBar->finish();
}

After

$progressBar = new ProgressBar($output);
$callback = function () use ($progressBar): void {
    $progressBar->advance(); // does nothing if TERM is not set
};
($this->import)($callback);
$progressBar->finish(); // does nothing if TERM is not set

[ogizanagi]

Interesting ; I'm used to do the same whenever the input is not interactive (not exactly what it means, agreed) or not decorated, but I recently stumbled upon https://twitter.com/rectorphp/status/1492135257356779528?s=20&t=GZLDX4J0EwZEDnLQtlctrg. So it seems some would like to keep such progress bars in their CI/crons output (with a lower redraw frequency)?

Another possibility might be a --no-progress option.

[greg0ire]

A lower redraw frequency might be a great strategy, but it's significantly more complex and means you have some idea of how long the process is going to take. Having an explicit option does sound like a better, more backwards-compatible strategy (and is something I have been looking for in bin/console --help today). 👍

[alexander-schranz]

Maybe instead of a frequency a steps value could be defined which has a default value for none interactive terminal e.g. 4 then only 0% 25% 50% 75% and 100% is outputted.

[ogizanagi]

Reminds me of the ProgressIndicator as well, which is yet another alternative to the ProgressBar in some cases, but still requires the developer to adapt the logic for CI/crons output.

[greg0ire]

I think a piece of the puzzle will be https://github.com/symfony/symfony/blob/6.1/src/Symfony/Component/Console/Output/NullOutput.php : it will allow avoiding many if statements in Progress{Bar,Indicator}.
One hurdle is that Symfony does not instantiate those itself, unless the user is using OutputStyle::createProgressBar (there is no ProgressIndicator equivalent, by the way). Maybe objects implementing OutputInterface could have a new method indicating if progress should be printed to it, and another method to set the corresponding flag? Or there could be a static flag directly on the Progress{Bar,Indicator} class?

Regarding the definition of the --no-progress option, I think it should happen here:

symfony/src/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php

Lines 1042 to 1052 in 88497f2

	protected function getDefaultInputDefinition(): InputDefinition
	{
	return new InputDefinition([
	new InputArgument('command', InputArgument::REQUIRED, 'The command to execute'),
	new InputOption('--help', '-h', InputOption::VALUE_NONE, 'Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the <info>'.$this->defaultCommand.'</info> command'),
	new InputOption('--quiet', '-q', InputOption::VALUE_NONE, 'Do not output any message'),
	new InputOption('--verbose', '-v|vv|vvv', InputOption::VALUE_NONE, 'Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug'),
	new InputOption('--version', '-V', InputOption::VALUE_NONE, 'Display this application version'),
	new InputOption('--ansi', '', InputOption::VALUE_NEGATABLE, 'Force (or disable --no-ansi) ANSI output', null),
	new InputOption('--no-interaction', '-n', InputOption::VALUE_NONE, 'Do not ask any interactive question'),
	]);

While --progress seems a bit useless, if feels handy to use InputOption::VALUE_NEGATABLE because we would get a boolean on the other side (with InputOption::VALUE_NONE too, but I think it would be flipped).

🤔 note that if we set the default value of that option to getenv('TERM') !== false), then --progress would be useful.

[carsonbot]

Thank you for this suggestion.
There has not been a lot of activity here for a while. Would you still like to see this feature?

[greg0ire]

Yes.

[StefanvdBroek]

Yes please!

[szepeviktor]

Yes please.

[tazorax]

Yes, please :)

[Chi-teck]

This seems not a big deal to work around.

$progress_bar = new ProgressBar($output->isDecorated() ? $output : new NullOutput());

Or in case you are using output style.

$io = new SymfonyStyle($input, $output);
$progress_bar = $io->isDecorated() ? $io->createProgressBar() : new ProgressBar(new NullOutput());

And the most weird case when only stderr is redirected to a file.

$is_decorated = $output instanceof ConsoleOutputInterface && $output->getErrorOutput()->isDecorated();
$progress_bar = new ProgressBar($is_decorated ? $output : new NullOutput());

[carsonbot]

Thank you for this suggestion.
There has not been a lot of activity here for a while. Would you still like to see this feature?

[greg0ire]

Yes

[sebastiaanluca]

Just chiming in here, as our GitHub action job is failing because there's still progress bar output after the success message (and exit code?). So a --no-progress flag to disable the progress bar would be great!

2024-02-07T02:45:59.8421060Z > vendor/bin/rector --ansi
2024-02-07T02:46:36.1829547Z     0/3472 [░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]   0%
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2024-02-07T02:53:58.9036049Z �[30;42m                                                                                �[39;49m
2024-02-07T02:53:58.9037287Z �[30;42m [OK] Rector is done!                                                           �[39;49m
2024-02-07T02:53:58.9038345Z �[30;42m                                                                                �[39;49m
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[Chi-teck]

So a --no-progress flag to disable the progress bar would be great!

@sebastiaanluca rector has --no-progress-bar option

[sebastiaanluca]

I don't know why I posted this in symfony/symfony 😆🫣 AND rector has that flag indeed. I think I need some sleep, apologies.