installer: Support showing status information in terminal title (#16259)

Installing packages with a lot of dependencies does not have an easy way
of judging the current progress (apart from running `spack spec -I pkg`
in another terminal). This change allows Spack to update the terminal's
title with status information, including its current progress as well as
information about the current and total number of packages.

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/spack/docs/config_yaml.rst b/lib/spack/docs/config_yaml.rst
index 631b8f6b1b..8173e8a0a9 100644
--- a/lib/spack/docs/config_yaml.rst
+++ b/lib/spack/docs/config_yaml.rst
@@ -259,3 +259,16 @@ and ld.so will ONLY search for dependencies in the ``RUNPATH`` of
 the loading object.
 
 DO NOT MIX the two options within the same install tree.
+
+----------------------
+``terminal_title``
+----------------------
+
+By setting this option to ``true``, Spack will update the terminal's title to
+provide information about its current progress as well as the current and
+total package numbers.
+
+To work properly, this requires your terminal to reset its title after
+Spack has finished its work, otherwise Spack's status information will
+remain in the terminal's title indefinitely. Most terminals should already
+be set up this way and clear Spack's status information.