Research: should we make web_git a small, separate Sinatra app (or something like that)?

[raghubetina]

There's no reason for web_git to interact with the main Rails application, unlike say, ActiveAdmin. So it need not be a Rails engine. But there's every reason for it not to interact with the Rails app, e.g. to not be broken by a students' bug or locked out by a before_action.

Could we make it a standalone Sinatra app that lives in the same folder and is easy to launch in a separate Terminal tab? Would it still be a gem or just a file in the project folder? A gem seems neater.

[raghubetina]

@jelaniwoods This might be relevant:

https://thoughtbot.com/blog/how-to-share-a-session-between-sinatra-and-rails

[jelaniwoods]

@raghubetina That's really interesting! I didn't consider sharing cookies between apps like that. Although, would this Sinatra app need any authentication or access to the session? I imagine it would just need to be able to parse the git output and make/push/pull commits and branches.

[raghubetina]

@jelaniwoods No, the sharing cookies part is irrelevant to us. But interesting.

More relevant, I thought, was:

• the realization that we can mount within the same Rack app, and therefore presumably at the same port/Gitpod URL?
• the two methods of mounting, of which I think the Rack::Builder approach seems right for web_git?

[jelaniwoods]

@raghubetina Initial tests look promising. I've managed to squeeze my test Sinatra app into a gem. There is one minor change to the Rails app that needs to be made, but I intend to have a generator for that in the future.

If you're curious, here's the gem I'm working on: https://github.com/jelaniwoods-FurtherLearning/jw_git

[raghubetina]

Excellent.