Inexor Flex Profiles

[aschaeffer]

Profiles greatly improves the startup procedure of Inexor Flex, makes the Inexor Shell able to control other instances of Inexor Flex and makes the development process more effective.

Goals

• Run multiple instances of Inexor Flex on a system
  • e.g. Testing of tree synchronization (e.g. server list sync)
  • e.g. Running a separate Inexor Flex instance for each clans/communities on the same VM
• Use specialized profiles for special purposes
  • e.g. logging enabled, log level=debug (dev profile)
  • e.g. logging disabled, log level=warn (production profile)
• Connect to remote instances of Inexor Flex
• Easier to develop, debug and test
• Helps to bundle specific packages of Inexor (Game Client Distribution, Game Server Distribution)

User Stories

• [x] As a user I want to run the Inexor Game Client npm start
• [x] As a server administrator I want to control my (remote) game servers with the Inexor Shell (see note 1)
• [x] As a server owner I want to run multiple instances of Inexor Flex on the same VM in order to isolate the servers of hosted clans/communities
• [x] As a developer I want to start Inexor Flex in development mode easily npm run dev
• [x] As a developer I want to start multiple instances of Inexor Flex at the same time
• [x] As a distributor I want to provide a reasonable set of profiles for my bundle

Inexor Tree

• [x] The name of the default profile (this is the profile to use if Inexor Flex is started without a profile)
  • /flex/profiles/default = "client"
• [x] The name of the current profile
  • /flex/profiles/current = "devenv"
• [x] The names of all profiles
  • /flex/profiles/{profilename}
• [x] The configuration of a profile has it's own folder:
  • {configFolder}/inexor/{profilename}

Profiles we deliver by default

Logging

Profile	Log level	Log to console	Log to file
client	warn	false	false
server	warn	false	true
devenv	debug	true	false

Instances

Profile	Server	Client
client	yes, no autostart	yes, autostart
server	yes, autostart	no
devenv	yes, no autostart	yes, no autostart

Config files

• [x] client
  • name: Default production client
  • description: Production-ready client and optional local server
  • hostname: localhost
  • port: 31416
  • logging (logging.toml):
  • log level: warn
  • log to console: false
  • log to file: false
  • instances (instances.toml):
  • 31414
    • type: server
    • name: Default production server
    • autostart: false
    • autorestart: false
    • enet_port: 31415
  • 31417
    • type: client
    • name: Default production client
    • autostart: true
    • autorestart: true
• [x] server
  • name: Default production server
  • description: Production ready server
  • hostname: localhost
  • port: 31416
  • logging (logging.toml):
  • log level: warn
  • log to console: false
  • log to file: true
  • instances (instances.toml):
  • 31414
    • type: server
    • name: Default production server
    • autostart: true
    • autorestart: true
    • enet_port: 31415
• [x] devenv ()
  • name: Development environment
  • description: Local development environment
  • hostname: localhost
  • port: 31416
  • logging (logging.toml):
  • log level: debug
  • log to console: true
  • log to file: false
  • instances (instances.toml):
  • 31414
    • type: server
    • name: Default development server
    • autostart: false
    • autorestart: false
    • enet_port: 31415
  • 31417
    • type: server
    • name: Default development client
    • autostart: false
    • autorestart: false

Inexor Shell

• [x] The prompt shows the currently selected profile name and the hostname and port from the current profile:
  • profilename@hostname:port > _
• [x] By default, Inexor Shell uses the default profile
  • Normally the default profile is the local instance of Inexor Flex (localhost:31416)
  • e.g. default@localhost:31416 > _
• [x] A profile can be a remote instance of Inexor Flex
  • e.g. profile named remote1
  • hostname = remotehostname.com
  • port = 31416
  • e.g. remote1@remotehostname.com:31416 > _
• [x] You can start an Inexor Shell with a profile argument
  • inexor shell --profile=devenv
  • inexor shell --profile=remoteprofile
• [x] Change the profile while using the Inexor Shell
  • default@localhost:31416 > use devenv
  • devenv@localhost:31416 > use remote1
  • remote1@remotehostname.com:31416 > _
• [x] New commands
  • profile create <name> <hostname> <port>
  • profile remove <name>
  • profile switch <name>
• [x] Inexor Tree Client
  • Hand over the current profile name as first argument of the commands
  • Add the profile name as first argument to every command
  • The profile contains the hostname and port to use and therefore we can communicate to any local or remote instance of Inexor Flex

Inexor Flex

• [x] Command Line Argument "profile"
  • Start Inexor Flex with defaults
  • npm start
  • which is equivalent to npm run inexor --profile default
  • Start Inexor Flex with profile devenv
  • npm run inexor --profile devenv
  • which is equivalent to node server/index.js --profile=devenv
• [x] Loading from config files
  • getConfigPath(profile, 'instances.toml')
• [x] Startup Inexor Flex
  • Detect/load the list of profile names from filesystem (profiles.toml) and the name of the default profile
  • Set the current profile variable (from cmd line args)
  • Load current profile (port, hostname, ...)
  • Use getConfigPath(currentProfile, 'instances.toml') to start the Inexor Core instances
  • Loading logging configuration from config file ('logging.toml')

Notice(s)

1. Security measures and cheating protection are not focus of this issue

[Croydon]

Just to clearify my confusion: A single Flex instance can run several Core instances. But without implementing all the stuff from this issues, all of the Core instances from a single Flex instance would be feed with the exact same configuration?

I was under the impression that a single Flex instance can already manage several Core instances with different configs.

[aschaeffer]

It's about the configuration of Flex in the first place. You can have a completely other configuration for Flex in another profile, including another configuration of the instances. There is a config folder for each profile: {configFolder}/inexor/{profilename} where to put the configuration files. The combination of core instances and profiles makes it very powerful.

For example:

$ ls /home/user/.config/inexor/default
profile.toml
instances.toml

$ cat /home/user/.config/inexor/default/profile.toml
port = 31416
hostname = localhost
loglevel = warning
logtoconsole = false
logtofile = true

$ cat /home/user/.config/inexor/default/instances.toml
[instances]
[instances.31414]
type = "server"
name = "Default Inexor Server"
description = "Badly Configurated Server Inc. proudly presents your first Inexor Server"
autostart = false
[instances.31417]
type = "client"
name = "Default Inexor Client"
description = "The default Inexor Client"
autostart = false

$ ls /home/user/.config/inexor/devenv
profile.toml
instances.toml

$ cat /home/user/.config/inexor/devenv/profile.toml
port = 31416
hostname = localhost
loglevel = debug
logtoconsole = true
logtofile = false

$ cat /home/user/.config/inexor/devenv/instances.toml
[instances]
[instances.31414]
type = "server"
name = "Dev Server"
autostart = true
[instances.31417]
type = "client"
name = "Dev Client"
description = "The Dev Client"
autostart = true

[a-teammate]

Just as a little note: the game client will also want to create a new local game server if it wants to play offline (the listenserver will be removed in one of the next PRs)

[aschaeffer]

Done.

If something is not working => reopen.