[wolrah]

Exactly! The biggest problem with most progress bars is that they tie together multiple unrelated things that aren't even measured in the same way to a single indicator.

If there are multiple independent tasks, give me multiple independent indicators of their state. Multiple instances of the same class of task can of course be grouped, you don't need to list every file copy independently, but a file copy and an external dependency installer shouldn't be two stops on the same progress bar.