Support custom apps through config.

[jarosenb]

Overview

Add support for custom apps through custom_app_settings.py and urls_custom.py

Related

• TUP-250

Changes

• Add configurable settings to insert new apps, middleware and static file paths into the core CMS.

Testing

1. Copy custom_app_settings.example.py into custom_app_settings.py adn urls_custom.example.py into urls_custom.py
2. Start the CMS according to the README instructions and navigate to http://localhost:8000/test/. You should see the custom_example app being rendered.

Screenshots

[jchuahtacc]

Does it make more sense to move apps/custom_example to a separate sample repository that has a Dockerfile that demonstrates a downstream repository's structure? We could approve this PR and build a hashed image before building the sample repository. So the Dockerfile in the other repo might be:

FROM tacc/core-cms:tag_for_this_PR
COPY /apps/custom_example /apps

etc.

[wesleyboar]

I see, after this PR, how Core-CMS-Resources need not be a submodule.

Steps

1. Each Core-CMS-Resources directory becomes a repo or moves into tup-ui:/libs.

2. A project urls.py and settings_custom.py would be loaded as a custom app's.

3. To load project static files, a CMS STATICFILES_DIR entry would point outside CMS.

   Code Change

   change
   

   Core-CMS/taccsite_cms/settings.py

   Lines 215 to 217 in f65d0c4

   	) + tuple(glob(
   	os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'taccsite_custom', '*', 'static')
   	))

   to

       os.path.join(PATH_TO_THE_PROJECT_TO_RUN, 'static')
   )
   

4. Which then means to locally run a project, Python needs access to project name.

   Ideas

   • Developer can add a local docker_repo.var, the same file Jenkins config uses.
   • We can use a .env, and update Jenkins config to read it instead.

5. To load project templates/, a CMS TEMPLATESDIRS entry would point outside CMS.

   Code Change

   change
   

   Core-CMS/taccsite_cms/settings.py

   Lines 228 to 230 in f65d0c4

   	'DIRS': glob(
   	os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'taccsite_custom')
   	) + [

   to

           'DIRS': [
               os.path.join(PATH_TO_THE_PROJECT_TO_RUN, 'templates')
   

Not as proper as a project cms app (poc) building off a a core cms app (poc), but at least it is not a submodule.

[jchuahtacc]

We do not necessarily need them to be the same repo. They could, in theory, exist in the same Core-Cms-Resources repo where each directory has its own Dockerfile. It would require a little bit of tweaking to the Jenkins build job but would otherwise look the same from a Jenkins user's perspective.

[wesleyboar]

They could, in theory, exist in the same Core-Cms-Resources repo where each directory has its own Dockerfile. It would require a little bit of tweaking to the Jenkins build job [...]

Then I am excited. That is something I would like to see and learn from. I thought our Jenkins could not clone multiple repos in one job, thus could not mix and match content to build from, so I gave up on a Jenkins solution.

[wesleyboar]

Tested. Nothing breaks. Looks safe.

I don't immediately know how to use it, but it is required by https://github.com/TACC/tup-cms/tree/task/TUP-250--taccsite_custom-static-content which also works, and I do understand the use case of.