[FR] Facilitate monitoring of variables

[BeastyBlacksmith]

Ideally i would like to specify monitored variables in the constructor like

p = ProgressUnknown( "description", monitor = ( x, y, z ) )

And then everytime I call ProgressMeter.next! or ProgressMeter.update!, they are populated with the showvalues = (( :x, x ), (:y, y ), (:z, z )) automatically.

[KristofferC]

How would you propose the implementation would look like? What would be stored in the progress struct when it is constructed for this to be possible?

[BeastyBlacksmith]

I would think it should be possible to save e.g. x as Symbol and the tricky part would be to get the value of x when one of the updating methods gets called. Maybe via observables ?

[KristofferC]

tricky part would be to get the value of x when one of the updating methods gets called.

Indeed. You would need to capture a reference to the already existing variable and then u

So for example:

x = Ref(0)
p = ProgressUnknown( "description", monitor = (:x => x)
for i in 1:100
    x[] = 1
    showprogress(p)
end

There doesn't seem to be a large, if any at all, advantage over this vs just using the showvalues functionality.

[BeastyBlacksmith]

The advantage is less code duplication if you have something like conditional progress updates like scan_m here. Not a very important feature. More likely a "nice to have".