Rancher Desktop Design - Supporting Utilities

[rak-phillip]

Supporting Utilities

• Provide an area to control anything that might be considered a "Supporting Utility", like defining symlinks for macOS
• Add context to what we might be changing and how it will affect the environment through descriptions
• Explicitly commit changes through Apply actions

Using the space to share this initial design proposal from the UI group. I've add some quick notes for each section of Rancher Desktop that might change. If you have any questions about anything you see below, please ask and I'll provide some more detail.

Original Discussion #683

Feedback is highly valued and welcome.

[jandubois]

Assuming we have separate settings for each runtime I think we should move each "Supporting Utility" to the settings for the runtime it belongs to, e.g.

• Kubernetes: helm, kubectl, kim
• Docker: docker-cli
• Containerd: nerdctl
• Podman: podman

Even though the implementation is the same (we create a symlink), the user context should be: "What can I configure for the runtime I'm about to use?".

[rak-phillip]

Perhaps, it might be a good idea to discuss what the future state might look like concerning support for multiple runtimes. Getting a better idea of how we can expect multiple runtimes to behave and how we might want to interact with each of them will help us make the right decision here.

[jandubois]

Maybe some utilities should appear on multiple settings pages:

If you configure Kubernetes with containerd, then nerdctl should also be included on the Kubernetes settings page (in addition to the Containerd settings page, if that one is enabled as well).

Similarly, if you configure Kubernetes with moby, then docker (cli) should also be included in the Kubernetes settings page.

Actually, so far these are the only utilities that can appear on multiple settings pages.

[mook-as]

Looking around, it looks like modern HIG (possibly due to phone / Apple influence) is all about instant apply:

• macOS
• Gnome
• Windows

I couldn't find specific wording for KDE, but I think the default there is still a separate apply button.

[rak-phillip]

Great catch! Thanks for calling this out. We'll see about getting this updated.