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Add progress bars and spinners for long-running CLI operations#149

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copilot/add-progress-bar-capability
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Add progress bars and spinners for long-running CLI operations#149
Copilot wants to merge 2 commits intomainfrom
copilot/add-progress-bar-capability

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Copilot AI commented Mar 30, 2026

Any operation taking >30s (container startup, Azure Bicep deployment, DB migration, pipeline sync) gave no visual feedback beyond a static message. Users had no way to gauge progress or distinguish a slow operation from a hang.

New: cmd/progress.go

Zero-dependency terminal progress UI with three primitives:

  • progressBar — in-place [████████░░░░░░░░] 8/36 waiting for DevLake (1m20s elapsed) via \r
  • countdown(n, label) — deterministic per-second fill bar for fixed-duration sleeps
  • spinWhile(label, fn) — runs fn in a goroutine, shows a braille spinner (⠋⠙⠹⠸⠼⠴⠦⠧⠇⠏) until it returns

Constants progressLineWidth = 72 and progressBarWidth = 24 keep rendering consistent across all callers.

Applied to long-running operations

Location Before After
waitForReady / waitForReadyAny / waitForMigration New line per poll attempt Single in-place progress bar
startLocalContainers — MySQL init sleep time.Sleep(30s) countdown(30, "MySQL initializing")
DeployBicep in deploy_azure.go Blocking call, no feedback spinWhile("Deploying Azure resources via Bicep", ...)
Azure MySQL restart sleep time.Sleep(30s) countdown(30, "waiting for MySQL")
triggerAndPoll in configure_projects.go New line every 10s with raw elapsed/status In-place [████░░░░] 3/8 tasks — TASK_RUNNING (45s elapsed)

Example — spinner wrapping Bicep deployment

var deployment *azure.DeploymentOutput
err = spinWhile("Deploying Azure resources via Bicep (this takes several minutes)", func() error {
    var innerErr error
    deployment, innerErr = azure.DeployBicep(azureRG, templatePath, params)
    return innerErr
})

On failure, spinWhile clears the spinner line before returning so the caller's error message lands on a clean line.

Original prompt

Add "progress bar" capability in the UI to Containers spinning up and long deployment ones like Azure deployment. Basically anything in the flow where a user has to wait longer than 30 seconds for something should ideally have a progress bar

The user has attached the following file paths as relevant context:

  • .github/copilot-instructions.md
  • AGENTS.md
  • AGENTS.md

Created from VS Code.

- New cmd/progress.go: progressBar struct (in-place fill bar with \r),
  countdown() for deterministic sleeps, spinWhile() for indeterminate
  waits (braille spinner). Constants progressLineWidth/progressBarWidth
  ensure consistent rendering across all callers.
- cmd/helpers.go: waitForReady, waitForReadyAny, waitForMigration now
  show an animated [████░░░░] progress bar instead of printing a new
  line per attempt.
- cmd/deploy_local.go: 30s MySQL init sleep replaced with countdown bar.
- cmd/deploy_azure.go: DeployBicep wrapped with spinWhile(); MySQL 30s
  sleep replaced with countdown().
- cmd/configure_projects.go: triggerAndPoll uses in-place \r updates
  with renderBar for task progress.

Agent-Logs-Url: https://github.com/DevExpGbb/gh-devlake/sessions/5882daaa-5962-4400-851a-c131c3cb23f9

Co-authored-by: ewega <26189114+ewega@users.noreply.github.com>
Copilot AI changed the title [WIP] Add progress bar for long-running UI processes Add progress bars and spinners for long-running CLI operations Mar 30, 2026
Copilot AI requested a review from ewega March 30, 2026 16:00
@ewega ewega marked this pull request as ready for review May 6, 2026 09:37
Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings May 6, 2026 09:37
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Pull request overview

This PR introduces a small, zero-dependency progress UI helper for the gh-devlake Cobra CLI and wires it into several long-running operations (container readiness polling, fixed sleeps, Azure Bicep deployment, and pipeline monitoring) to provide continuous terminal feedback instead of static messages.

Changes:

  • Added cmd/progress.go with an in-place progress bar, deterministic countdown bar, and a spinner wrapper for indeterminate waits.
  • Updated DevLake readiness + migration polling to render a single in-place progress bar instead of printing a new line per attempt.
  • Wrapped long sleeps and Azure deployment / pipeline monitoring with countdown/spinner/in-place progress output.
Show a summary per file
File Description
cmd/progress.go Adds progress bar, countdown, and spinner primitives for in-place terminal feedback.
cmd/helpers.go Uses the new progress bar for /ping readiness and migration polling loops.
cmd/deploy_local.go Replaces a fixed MySQL initialization sleep with a countdown bar during local deploy.
cmd/deploy_azure.go Adds countdown for MySQL start wait and wraps Bicep deployment in a spinner.
cmd/configure_projects.go Switches pipeline polling output to an in-place progress bar/status line.

Copilot's findings

  • Files reviewed: 5/5 changed files
  • Comments generated: 3

Comment thread cmd/progress.go
Comment on lines +14 to +56
const progressLineWidth = 72

// progressBarWidth is the number of block characters in every progress bar.
const progressBarWidth = 24

// progressBar renders an in-place terminal progress bar using \r.
// Create with newProgressBar, call update to redraw, and done to finish.
type progressBar struct {
total int
width int
start time.Time
}

func newProgressBar(total int) *progressBar {
return &progressBar{total: total, width: progressBarWidth, start: time.Now()}
}

// renderBar returns a [████░░░░] string representing current/total progress.
// Rounding is applied so early progress is visible even at low percentages.
func renderBar(current, total, width int) string {
if total <= 0 {
return "[" + strings.Repeat("░", width) + "]"
}
// Use rounding division to avoid premature completion or invisible early progress.
filled := (width*current + total/2) / total
if filled > width {
filled = width
}
return "[" + strings.Repeat("█", filled) + strings.Repeat("░", width-filled) + "]"
}

// update redraws the progress bar at position current.
// It uses \r to overwrite the current line in the terminal.
func (p *progressBar) update(current int, label string) {
bar := renderBar(current, p.total, p.width)
elapsed := time.Since(p.start).Truncate(time.Second)
fmt.Printf("\r %s %2d/%-2d %s (%s elapsed) ", bar, current, p.total, label, elapsed)
}

// clear erases the progress bar line and returns the cursor to column 0.
func (p *progressBar) clear() {
fmt.Printf("\r%s\r", strings.Repeat(" ", progressLineWidth))
}
Comment thread cmd/deploy_azure.go
Comment on lines +289 to +294
var deployment *azure.DeploymentOutput
err = spinWhile("Deploying Azure resources via Bicep (this takes several minutes)", func() error {
var innerErr error
deployment, innerErr = azure.DeployBicep(azureRG, templatePath, params)
return innerErr
})
Comment thread cmd/configure_projects.go
Comment on lines 460 to 465
if err != nil {
elapsed := time.Since(deadline.Add(-timeout)).Truncate(time.Second)
fmt.Printf(" [%s] Could not check status...\n", elapsed)
fmt.Printf("\r %-*s", progressLineWidth-3, fmt.Sprintf("⚠️ Could not check status (%s elapsed)", elapsed))
} else {
elapsed := time.Since(deadline.Add(-timeout)).Truncate(time.Second)
fmt.Printf(" [%s] Status: %s | Tasks: %d/%d\n", elapsed, p.Status, p.FinishedTasks, p.TotalTasks)
bar := renderBar(p.FinishedTasks, p.TotalTasks, progressBarWidth)
fmt.Printf("\r %-*s", progressLineWidth-3, fmt.Sprintf("%s %d/%d tasks — %s (%s elapsed)", bar, p.FinishedTasks, p.TotalTasks, p.Status, elapsed))

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3 participants