# Improvements to --verbose for flox install

**URL:** <https://discourse.flox.dev/t/improvements-to-verbose-for-flox-install/987>\
**Category:** Feature Requests\
**Created:** [November 22, 2024, 7:54am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/improvements-to-verbose-for-flox-install/987 "2024-11-22T07:54:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![t0rx](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/t0rx/32/705_2.png) [@t0rx](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/t0rx)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2024, 7:54am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/improvements-to-verbose-for-flox-install/987/1 "2024-11-22T07:54:45Z")

</div>

When installing larger packages (e.g. google-chrome) which take a while, it’d be useful to get some more feedback on what is happening. The --verbose or -v options don’t seem to change the output level currently (I’ve tried both “flox install -v google-chrome” and “flox -v install google-chrome”).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![t0rx](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/t0rx/32/705_2.png) [@t0rx](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/t0rx)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2024, 7:56am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/improvements-to-verbose-for-flox-install/987/2 "2024-11-22T07:56:13Z")

</div>

BTW, I also don’t see anything in the watchdog log file relating to the install either during or afterwards.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ysndr](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/ysndr/32/340_2.png) [@ysndr](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/ysndr)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2024, 12:34pm UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/improvements-to-verbose-for-flox-install/987/3 "2024-11-22T12:34:23Z")

</div>

Hej @t0rx  
Thank you for reporting on your difficulties.  
We are aware of this limitation in our logging.  
In fact currently we simply collect output emitted by our builds, without forwarding it, while we show a spinner indicating progress, clearly during long downloads or builds of uncached software, this is not satisfactory.  
Since the builds of environments are performed “out of process” we are still discussing the correct war of integrating the output in the in-process logging and verbosity setup (which is controlled by the verbosity flag)

Currently we have several issues logged for this:

> <https://github.com/flox/flox/issues/2219>
>
> \### Motivation
> 
> \*\*When\*\* I am performing a particularly long activation (many GB… of packages, building from source, slow network)
> \*\*I need\*\* Flox to tell me what it's doing
> \*\*So I can\*\* know that Flox is working and not broken
> 
> \### Acceptance Criteria
> 
> \_This needs design. Below is a bootstrapping of events to consider hooking into:\_
> 
> \* Flox tells me when it's evaluating my manifest and resolving it with catalog service
> \* Flox tells me when it's fetching from substitutor 
> \* Flox shows progress during downloads
> \* Flox tells me when it's building from source

> <https://github.com/flox/flox/issues/1726>
>
> \*\*Describe the feature:\*\*
> 
> It tells the user that a compilation or package bui…ld is happening. 
> 
> \*\*Describe a use case of this feature:\*\*
> 
> I run \`flox install \<somepackage not in the cache\>\` and I get a build happening. 
> 
> \*\*Acceptance criteria:\*\*
> 1. We tell the user that a build is happening and therefore may take a while. 
> 
> 
> For an example: \`flox install python311Packages.pytorch-bin\` (at least for me)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![t0rx](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/t0rx/32/705_2.png) [@t0rx](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/t0rx)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2024, 12:46pm UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/improvements-to-verbose-for-flox-install/987/4 "2024-11-22T12:46:25Z")

</div>

OK, cool. Sounds like you’re on top of it!