Re: [PATCH 1/2] progress: create progress struct in 'verbose' mode

From: Jonathan Tan <jonathantanmy@google.com>
To: gitster@pobox.com
Cc: emilyshaffer@google.com, git@vger.kernel.org,
	Jonathan Tan <jonathantanmy@google.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] progress: create progress struct in 'verbose' mode
Date: Wed,  9 Sep 2020 15:42:53 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200909224253.866718-1-jonathantanmy@google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqqh7t0zy43.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> > Emily Shaffer <emilyshaffer@google.com> writes:
> >
> >> The main concern I saw here was "we are doing a lot of work that isn't
> >> used if the user doesn't want to log traces" - should I approach a
> >> reroll of this topic by trying to be smarter about whether to set
> >> 'quiet' or 'print' or 'verbose' or whatever it is renamed to, based on
> >> whether there is a trace destination? Then for systems which are logging
> >> traces the extra work is worth it, but for everyone else it can function
> >> as before.
> >>
> >> I don't love it from a design perspective - it feels a little like
> >> progress module is looking a little too closely at trace module
> >> internals.
> >
> > Isn't that primarily due to the decision to tie progress and trace
> > too closely?  If so, perhaps that needs to be revisited?
> 
> Or the "too close coupling" needs to be accepted as the cost of
> doing so (as "progress is often a good cue for an event worth
> tracing" was a convenient way to cheat by programmers not to spend
> too many braincycles to decide adding trace points---they
> automatically got them when they decided to show progress output).

I wouldn't describe it as "cheat", but I agree with the general
sentiment - in general, I would think that if something is lengthy
enough to need to indicate progress to the user, we should trace its
performance.