I agree - you only poll when you haven't heard anything in awhile.
But you still DO poll sometimes. There are well over a hundred
job attributes defined (and probably more coming). Binding them
all into larger and larger notifications which are UNRELIABLE
ANYWAY (for delivery) isn't good design.
The issue of when certain 'static' variables getting initialized
is specific to each interpreter and each implementation. A client
always want correct information immediately available. But servers
fill it in when they know it (perhaps quite a way into the job,
including at the END of the job - which defeats a 'gas gauge'
entirely).
As I discussed with Harry offline on the phone today, an
implementation can always append additional bindings. Making
those bindings required for all implementations (when the
list is already too large) is a bad idea, in my opinion.
Cheers,
- Ira McDonald
High North