Show progress in a azure-pipeline output - azure

Question

so I have my computer set up as an agent pool in azure-devops. I'm creating a test for latency so the developers can use it in their CI, the script runs in python and test various points in a system I have set up for the company which is connected to the cloud, it's mainly for informative purposes. When I run the script I have to wait some time, so the system I have connected goes through its normal network cycle inspecting all the devices in the local network, not very important for que question, however when I'm waiting I show in the terminal a message with "..." going from "." to ".." to "...", just to show the script didn't crash or anything.
the python code looks like this and works just fine when I run it locally:
sys.stdout.write("\rprocessing queue, timing varies depending on priority" + ("."*( i % 3 + 1))+ "\r")
sys.stdout.flush()
however the output shown in the azure pipeline shows all of the lines without replacing them. Is there a way to do what I want?

Answer 1

I am afraid showing progress is not supported in azure pipeline. Azure pipeline log console isnot user interactive. It just capture the agent machine terminal outputs.
You might have to use a simpler way to indicate that the script is now executing and not finished yet. For simple example:
sys.stdout.write("Waiting for processing queue ..." )
You can report this problem to microsoft development team. Hope they find a way to fix this in the future sprint.

Answer 2

I have seen it once but never actually used it myself, this can be done in both bash and PowerShell, not sure if this works inside a Python script, you might have to call bash/PowerShell from within your Python script.
It is possible to set a progress value in percent that is visible outside of the log, but as I understand it this value is step-spefific, meaning it only applies to the pipeline step you're currently in. You could drag the numeric value (however many percent) along into the next step, but the progress counter would then again show up in the next step. I believe it is not possible to have a pipeline global display of a progress.
If you export a progress value it will show up beside the step name in the left hand side step list.
This setting of a progress (also exporting one variable from one step to another, which is typically done that way) can be done by echoing special logging commands. There's a great description to be found here: Logging commands
What you want to do is something just as it is shown as an example on the linked page:
echo "Begin a lengthy process..."
for i in {0..100..10}
do
sleep 1
echo "##vso[task.setprogress value=$i;]Sample Progress Indicator"
done
echo "Lengthy process is complete."
All of these special logging commands start with ##vso[task... The VSO is a relict to the time when Azure DevOps was called Visual Studio Online.
There are a whole bunch of them, but most of the time what you really need is exporting variables from one build step context to another, which is done with ##vso[task.setvariable]value