Users need feedback during long install process

[chrisfromredfin]

Users need to be informed that something is happening, even if it's by way of a fake animation or spinner. That composer process takes a long time even on my pretty beefy Macbook Pro M2 / 32GB.

IDEALLY, we'd be able to give SOME indication of actual process, maybe by grep'ing out milestones from the composer output. But at a minimum it would be nice to even have a spinner or something. Totally static can be unnerving.

[phenaproxima]

Fully agreed. @rikki-iki is on board to do the styling, and I'm hoping she'll create a spinner or animation of some kind. (If the upcoming work on the installer is any indicator, it should include one.)

Getting useful progress output from Composer is quite tricky since it offers no meaningful machine-readable output (and, depending on your personal level of bitterness, little useful human-readable output). Grepping probably is the best option, sadly.

[pameeela]

Agreed, I had the same thought. I think a spinner is good enough for now, because it's nice and simple. I'm also not sure we'd want to show any composer output, it is liable to scare off our target audience!

[rikki-iki]

Loading spinner added in #22

[gitressa]

I do think more feedback would be nice ...

It could output all details by default, or under an optional, expandable "Detailed feedback" element at the bottom?

This way, interested users can always check the progress, and see if the process has stalled, or there's an error message. This could also provide feedback, for easier and further debugging here.

EDIT: The error messages will be taken care of here:

• Inform users when an error happens #58

I do still think general progress feedback would be nice, something like this:

System ready (PHP, SQLite)
Composer install completed
Drupal 11 installed
Configuration imported

.... though, it might already do this -- I ran into problems, and haven't yet completed the process :)

[phenaproxima]

This is somewhat improved by #68. It's not ideal to show Composer's output, even one line at a time, but it gives you a clearer indication that something is actually happening. I'm very open to suggestions on how to improve this further, presentationally or otherwise.