Subject: bug#58375: Installer does not show what is being downloaded

From: Josselin Poiret <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2022 20:09:33 +0200

Hi Julien,

Julien Lepiller <[email-masked]> writes:
> I installed Guix on a new drive, so I tried the installer from the latest image. After reviewing the system config, the installer goes to a black screen where guix output is shown. Although I can see messages about substitutes being updated, and how much will be downloaded, all download lines are replaced with a seemingly random number of dots:
>
> substitute: mise à jour des substituts depuis «…»... 100.0 %
> 4.5 Mo seront téléchargés.
> .
> ...
> .
> .
> ......
>
> Maybe this is related to the translation?

I agree that this does look pretty bad, but this is because we capture
the guix command output to a log file so that we're able to include it
in the installer dump if anything goes wrong.  Guix detects it's not
talking directly to a terminal and so doesn't try to use terminal
specific escape codes to display the download progress.  I don't know
how we could improve on that front though, since in general capturing
the guix command output helps with debugging issues.

Best,
-- 
Josselin Poiret