Nice GUI for user interaction

[tepene]

Describe the feature

I'd like this project to be enhanced with a nice GUI for user interaction because this project should be easy to use and have an option to give you some insights.

some ideas:

• page to launch automation jobs
• page to display all images stored in the registry
• page to edit configuration files

I already did some tests with ansible semaphore which is nice for all the ansible jobs but it also introduces some overhead with provisioning. And it has it's own usage logic which is ok but it's not going to serve us well in the long term.

Maybe NiceGUI is something we could use.

[tepene]

NiceGUI combined with ansible-runner could be a good combination

[tepene]

I started to play around with NiceGui. My efforts are in the tepne/nicegui branch.

Here a screenshot how things could look like:

Some things are still missing before i can MR this to main. Noteworthy:

• Find best way to store configuration data
• Add configuration file picker
• Make sure ansible loads configuration file on each job
• Make sure ansible-runner jobs run async
• Add progress bar for jobs
• ansible.cfg in wrong place when playbook launched via ansible-runner
• update forge.sh to use data from volume mount
• update docs for gui usage

[tepene]

I added a configuration file picker. Still some quirks to iron out before ready for MR.

[tepene]

Slowly but steady, making some progress:

Screencast.from.2024-05-08.21-04-00.webm

Config data is now stored in a podman volume. For currently unknown reason ansible does not pick up my --extra-vars statement. I will investigate that further and apply necessary changes.

[tepene]

I was able to fix --extra-vars issue. Configuration is loading now as expected. So, almost there, just need to adapt some changes in the devcontainer.json and forge.sh

[castrojo]

Got a post up! https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/self-hosters-the-forge-needs-your-eyes-and-hands/1566

[tepene]

Got a post up! https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/self-hosters-the-forge-needs-your-eyes-and-hands/1566

Thanks, I'll update the docs asap so people are not confused too much.

[tepene]

Added some documentation. Hopefully enough fore others to get started.