New features in time_report.h

[Alpar Juttner]

The attached patch adds two new features

• The output of TimeReport can be suspended using its active attribute
• The format of the time printing can now be configured as a global parameter. Two formats implemented:
  • NORMAL: It prints all the values measured by TimeStamp. This is the format that was implemented before.
  • SHORT: It prints the real (wall clock) time plus an error indicator (in percentage) calculated as follows.

    (realTime()-(userTime()+systemTime()+cUserTime()+cSystemTime())/realTime()
    

The second feature needs a static member, which prohibits using time_measure.h as an include only header. Being it is mainly a developing/testing tool, I don't think it is a major problem.

[Peter Kovacs]

I like these changes.

However, the global parameter is a bit strange for me. Wouldn't it be better to avoid such parameter and provide two separate query functions of type std::string (e.g. string(), shortString() or format(), shortFormat() etc.)? And operator<< would simply use one of them. Another possible solution would be to keep this option and its setters/getters but as a local field of TimeStamp objects and introduce a function const TimeStamp& short() const to provide a copy/view of the original object with short format parameter.

[Alpar Juttner]

The reason for the global parameter is that a frequent use of TimeStamp is through TimeReport, where the value printed by the destructor. In addition, I don't think anyone would like to use both versions in the same code, but instead the user wants to set his preference globally.

[Peter Kovacs]

I see. Then this patch can be pushed to the main branch.

[Alpar Juttner]

Merged to the main branch, see [c40a9d94442d].