WIP - Service plugins

[Theodlz]

Just a quick experiment with plug-and-play microservices. Other instances of SkyPortal (such as Icare, used by GRANDMA) have some custom microservices. It's a little awkward that they have to maintain their special architecture to get just one microservice running.

This is just an idea of how we could allow one to add as many custom microservices as needed with just a few lines added to baselayer.

And, here's the demo repo that shows what a git repo for a custom microservice needs to look like:
https://github.com/Theodlz/skyportal-demo-plugin

Essentially, one can just add to the config's plugin section:

plugins:
  demo:
    url: https://github.com/Theodlz/skyportal-demo-plugin.git
    branch: main
    params:
      demo_param: "Demo microservice plugin"

which will automatically download and update the plugin when calling make run to start the app.

Definitely a WIP, but it works perfectly as is.

[stefanv]

What does a plugin do vs a microservice?

[Theodlz]

Hi @stefanv,

It's the same thing! The idea here is just to allow folks to add custom micro services to their app without having to actually merge the service to the app's repo.

A good example is using Fink broker in SkyPortal to get new. Doesn't make sense to add it to SkyPortal but one might one to add it to its own instance.

This would allow that. Happy to change the name/terminology used to call this new feature.

The reason why I called it plug-ins is that this could be extended to not just micro services but maybe front end and API one day in the future.

[stefanv]

Ah, in that case I wonder if we shouldn't just add the submodule functionality to the services?

I'd also like to move port definitions and other configuration so that each service definition happens in one place.