Re-work UI to expose underlying operations #485

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2025-01-15T10:51:09Z

decentral1se commented

2025-01-15 10:51:09 +00:00

abra is gaining more UI magical powers and @forest has given a spark of inspiration and some direction in this thread.

Today we just dump everything to --debug and the abra output just hangs waiting for stuff to work or fail. That is because we haven't really had a "UI layer" to deal with this stuff.

That's changing in #484 and I can see that it would allow you to, in one place in the code "start the UI" then "run the logic" and have "the logic" send back updates to "the UI" to update a list of operations, with indicators of progress and such (e.g. "starting this, running this, finished this").

I wouldn't start such a refactor without more feedback. I won't pick this up now but I think it would be a really great improvement. Leaving this for "another day".

Related: toolshed/organising#657

`abra` is gaining more UI magical powers and `@forest` has given a spark of inspiration and some direction in [this thread](https://matrix.to/#/!DfXPgKLoYCvjHithgS:autonomic.zone/$S8fl3GM1r18pSH4qk-nuGwu1XExHeI4jNosURvAcPBk?via=autonomic.zone&via=matrix.org&via=cyberia.club). Today we just dump everything to `--debug` and the `abra` output just hangs waiting for stuff to work or fail. That is because we haven't really had a "UI layer" to deal with this stuff. That's changing in https://git.coopcloud.tech/toolshed/abra/pulls/484 and I can see that it would allow you to, in one place in the code "start the UI" then "run the logic" and have "the logic" send back updates to "the UI" to update a list of operations, with indicators of progress and such (e.g. "starting this, running this, finished this"). I wouldn't start such a refactor without more feedback. I won't pick this up now but I think it would be a really great improvement. Leaving this for "another day". Related: https://git.coopcloud.tech/toolshed/organising/issues/657

❤️ 1

decentral1se changed title from ~~Re-work UI of underlying operations of `abra`~~ to Re-work UI to expose underlying operations

2025-01-15 13:17:36 +00:00

decentral1se added the enhancement design labels 2025-01-16 07:46:24 +00:00

3wordchant commented

2025-01-29 06:40:45 +00:00

Amazing idea, think this would the waiting a lot more bearable.

And it might lead to useful bug reports about exactly which steps are timing out for different recipes?

Amazing idea, think this would the waiting a lot more bearable. And it might lead to useful bug reports about exactly which steps are timing out for different recipes?

🎉 1

decentral1se commented

2025-09-04 15:40:08 +00:00

Relevant: #613

Relevant: https://git.coopcloud.tech/toolshed/abra/issues/613

decentral1se commented

2025-10-02 09:08:04 +00:00

One consideration which I realised while doing #687 is that there is a tension between providing text output and interactive output. This was already a debate since the unix philosophy got drafted. I think I'm OK with interactive outputs that just don't deal with pager / text output too well (altho I'd gladly see this improved) as long as we maintain machine-readable output beside it? Any feedback welcome on this.

One consideration which I realised while doing https://git.coopcloud.tech/toolshed/abra/pulls/687 is that there is a tension between providing text output and interactive output. This was already a debate since the unix philosophy got drafted. I think I'm OK with interactive outputs that just don't deal with pager / text output too well (altho I'd gladly see this improved) as long as we maintain machine-readable output beside it? Any feedback welcome on this.

decentral1se commented

2026-02-15 13:26:20 +00:00

I'm abandoning any further UI/UX atm. I believe the underlying problem is that the declarative nature of swarm is making it very hard to make a simple/sane UI/UX layer due to the explosion of possible states and faulty reporting from the runtime... I must have tried to make progress on this over 10 times now and without making progress... so, I think we should deprioritise this permanently until The Future ™️ A New Hope being toolshed/organising#682.

I'm abandoning any further UI/UX atm. I believe the underlying problem is that the declarative nature of swarm is making it very hard to make a simple/sane UI/UX layer due to the explosion of possible states and faulty reporting from the runtime... I must have tried to make progress on this over 10 times now and without making progress... so, I think we should deprioritise this permanently until The Future ™️ A New Hope being https://git.coopcloud.tech/toolshed/organising/issues/682.

decentral1se closed this issue

2026-02-15 13:26:20 +00:00

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Reference: toolshed/abra#485