Various Ideas to deal with limited screen space

[maralorn]

• Partly inspired by discussions on matrix and nh displays duplicate error messages during build failures while nixos-build shows single message #177

Problem: Terminals are finite and there is so much info we could display.

Ideas:

• When screen space gets tight, collapse linear chains of waiting builds into one row.
• Print the collected errors (and the build graph) completely without height restriction when exiting nom. (since seeing all errors after nom exited was requested on matrix)
• Only start showing error messages in the error summary area once the first error has scrolled out of the screen. (Fixes nh displays duplicate error messages during build failures while nixos-build shows single message #177)
• Priorities running builds when sorting the build graph and only prioritize failures when nix exited. (Could help with: Can’t see running builds when there are too many errors #142) Maybe we only prioritize running builds if we detect screen limitation pressure.

[JonnieCache]

The main thing that struck me on trying out the new version as part of nh this morning is that the bars dont fit at all on half of a laptop screen:

Previously the layout fit this window shape rather nicely.

What I'd personally try out in this situation would be making the progress bar out of the package name itself, by drawing the characters in two different colors. You could also do it with the done/total numerals instead - they are a more consistent length so it might work better. The background color could alternately be used to draw the bar behind the numerals.

Finally the ellipses are just wasted space.