Front-end overhaul

[tyler-sommer]

Rewrite the frontend and use React or Vue. The application would query RESTish endpoints to load data.

This raises a few issues:

• To grpc or not to grpc
  • implementing all the boilerplate necessary for the grpc proto/client/server is super annoying, so making it necessary to do that for all the features the web server uses would be tedious at best.
  • I can implement client-only features as needed, or maybe alleviate the issue by writing some code generators (https://github.com/dave/jennifer ?)
• If no grpc, then re-doing the front end isn't actually necessary.
• But, reasons for going all-in on some fancy js framework:
  • Experiment with recent front end frameworks
  • Reusable grpc/json endpoints would be pretty neat-- prototyping a new feature, using existing data endpoints, can be done without ever recompiling the server.
• And finally, if we do rewrite
  • Front end build tools will be required, apparently "webpack"
  • The Temptation of Using TypeScript
  • A proper design wouldn't hurt
  • Or like, leave the existing stuff alone and just make a new package that has this neat new stuff in it-- implement http.Module. Hey, that's neat.

[tyler-sommer]

I'm actually semi-happy with the frontend for now.

As it stands right now, it'd be too much effort to make the web application use the grpc client. It still remains on the "want to do" list. I will probably take a stab at seeing how that looks in any new web modules, especially for what I have brewing for the web UI for production chains.