Make Configuring Faraday Less Painful

[kb1lqc]

Summary

It is becoming obnoxious to configure INI files and transfer data around the various applications. I think it's possible to make Proxy use web sessions to create persistent data that can be transmitted to the applications as necessary. Flask has sessions built in but also allows extensions such as Beaker which add sessions as well.

Problem Explanation

I am 100% sessions are the way to go but it appears to be that way to me. Really all we need is a reliable way to identify anything we'd want to be user configurable across a network connection. Preferably in a secure way too though not encrypted. While the option exists to use a common INI file, this would mean that we'd have to know where it was no matter where the script being run was located. This is not ideal. If we could query proxy and obtain all configuration data in a web savvy way I think that would stay true to our values of making this seamless for the user.

Environment

Software

Proxy application is where this should probably go where all applications would request the data.

Hardware

N/A

Supporting Information

• Strive for one command window to configure Faraday radios. Currently we need three running faraday-proxy, faraday-deviceconfiguration, and faraday-simpleconfig. I propose one faraday-config

[kb1lqc]

Hmm This begs the question of what's worth it right now. This just seems to add onto the baggage that is configuration at this time. There must be a better way to structure the software that's easier to use and scale.

[kb1lqc]

First annoying thing is that you need to have faraday-proxy running. Then open another window and run faraday-configuration followed by a third window from which you kick-off the simple-config script with faraday-simpleconfig. This should all be one window!

[kb1lqc]

First off I'll need to run proxy automatically when device configuration is run. either I create a new faraday-config that wraps all three together or build a new one that calls proxy. Either way I will probably need to experiment with subprocess so let's start there with faraday-deviceconfiguration to call proxy.

[kb1lqc]

Looks like I'll want to use subprocess popen as it is non-blocking: https://docs.python.org/2/library/subprocess.html#popen-constructor

[kb1lqc]

Proxy starts automatically now using subprocess.Popen! Nextup is making the simpleconfig program run automatically.

[kb1lqc]

This should probably be a standalone program. This is because I need simpleconfig to run after deviceconfiguration starts. Therefore... maybe simpleconfig should be the shell

[kb1lqc]

OK I made a config.py that is a subprocess wrapper. However, I need to think about how to approach this. What I probably want to do is add as many configuration defaults as possible to the actual device-configuration command line. however it should also be intuitive and automatically load the default proxy settings and such.

[kb1lqc]

@kb1lqd and @el-iso I created a proxy route for '/config' so any application can query for the proxy configuration. This means that the configuration program just asks Proxy what radio it's talking with and we obtain callsign + nodeid automatically.

While I haven't updated it this actually means faraday-telemetry now needs no configuration to start if it were implemented there.

My goal is to reduce the actual number of configuration options that do not "just work" or have acceptable default values. This is an attempt to make configuration as simple as possible.

[el-iso]

@kb1lqc looks like youre well on your way to "it just works" configuration. Good stuff!