Detailed discussion and complete code for "Discover shared projects"

[harshit-soora]

Related to Issue #4120

Added support for env variable "VENDOR_SHARED_FILESYSTEM" to allow users to set up shared path in case those are different from /fs/scratch and /fs/project

During brute force looking for project we just need to check if there exists a .ondemand folder in any project path, if so, then it is an OOD project
<shared_projects_paths>/<group_id>/<brute force all child folders>/.ondemand

[harshit-soora]

One issue I have seen is
In UMD, our shared path looks like /scratch/zt1/project/sussman-lab/user/hsoora

So,
VENDOR_SHARED_FILESYSTEM = /scratch/zt1/project
group_id = sussman-lab

But, CurrentUser.group_names returns zt-sussman-lab instead of sussman-lab. This seems to be some conventions that we have at UMD. But my question is how to handle these?

[johrstrom]

This should come from the configuration_singleton.rb and likely shouldn't have hard coded paths.

[harshit-soora]

Agree, will update

[johrstrom]

I don't think we should be searching this all the time. Maybe we need a new view to import projects where we can trigger a search and potentially add an item to their own lookup file.

[harshit-soora]

What do you suggest

1. Using Rails.application.config.after_initialize function at dashboard/config/initializer and search for all path and save to .project_lookup or may be .shared_project_lookup. So will happpen everytime a user logs into dashboard (but may not end up using projects)

2. Create a _helper.rb, which will be called from project_controller.rb:index() and update the .project_lookup. So if a user route to project index then we add new entries to lookup file. To track single time edit we can keep a class variable. {also will have to track if any project already exists in the lookup}

3. Any better and easier suggestion

[johrstrom]

I think the workflow is more like

• the pages load all projects that you've imported into your lookup table
• we add a new page to import projects
  • on this new page, that's when we search the shared projects paths
  • We generate this list of possible projects to import and the user imports one
  • This shared project is then added to their lookup table so they don't have to search for it anymore

I guess my point is we shouldn't be searching these paths all the time. Instead we make a page specific to importing shared projects and when the user "imports" the project, that adds it to the lookup so we don't have to search for it again.

[johrstrom]

Can you separate this functionality? I mean make 1 pull request for the the search path functionality, then another to actually use it in a page?

[harshit-soora]

I am closing this PR, right now it have all the code, I will split it into 3 separate PRs

1. To create a form to import a project path, internally it will do nothing
2. Next to use the import directory from the form and save it to .lookup_file
3. Show paths which are shared with you inside of form, earlier it will be just empty text box, now will provide a drop down menu