App Custom Required Environment Vars

[atridad]

One thing that I think would help with some apps (drone being the one I was thinking of) is support for required environment variables when installing specific apps. Similar to how the ports are defined. That would let us specify the gitea URL and the OAuth info.

The idea would be that someone would have to specify these values when installing and could modify them in the "location" section. What do you think @staff?

[murgero]

@atridad I like the idea, and it removes the need to set them in an env file for example in the file manager.

However, I think an "Environment Variables" Tab is needed instead.

[thetomester13]

I'm a fan of this idea. I think it makes sense for a of apps if the user would have visibility and the ability to update some ENV variables in a separate configuration tab. I could see this being something potentially defined in the CloudronManifest of an app.

[atridad]

@murgero good point. An environment variables tab makes more sense.

[atridad]

@thetomester13 absolutely. My hope is that the manifest could contain required variables. Anything else can be added by users afterwards but required vars need to be defined before an app can be installed and cannot be removed (but can be modified) after installation

[rmdes]

This idea would be neat !!

[fbartels]

I think this is something that is quite nicely implemented in the Univention Appcenter concept. Maybe their implementation could serve as inspiration: https://docs.software-univention.de/app-provider-5.0.html#app-settings

[girish]

There's API for this internally. The CLI tool uses this API to get/set env vars (cloudron env get/list/set/unset) . I guess we have to add a UI for this, but so far I think only drone needs this. I also think drone is not the best way to design an app, that it cannot start without a runner configuration, seems quite strange. This is not like database settings which are critical for an app to start.

But as always, app always wins and Cloudron will adapt to what's there as opposed to what we wish is there

[atridad]

@girish Fair enough. Yeah in the case of Drone it does work without a runner (technically). More specifically, it needs a Gitea instance. It will "run" without a runner, but it will need a runner to actually execute any pipelines.

[robi]

@atridad are there any Drone feature requests to include a single runner by default and if one needs more, to add them separately?