Work since... wait for it... last MAX IV workshop

Created by: mguijarr

(subject line inspired by How I met your mother)

Here are my changes since last workshop, I rebased my code on top latest mxcube3/master in order to follow latest commits including changes by Mikel and Frederik. Hopefully I didn't make mistakes, and that everybody still find its things.

I made little changes to the CSS and layout, mainly trying to simplify a bit, removing unneeded divs, making more use of Bootstrap classes, etc. I chose to rename Method to Task everywhere, at least in front-end code, because I really think the word task is more appropriate ; indeed, a centring is not a data collection method, an energy scan neither ; task is more general. I hope you agree with this.

I added buttons to add tasks (Characterisation, Data Collection) to queue for samples using the samples grid. Added tasks are "clickable", it opens the parameters window. I also added a close button, but it doesn't seem to work for the moment (sorry - there is an error in the server when deleting an item).

I have to admit I had extreme difficulties finding my way in the server code :-(, with all the IDs and I find some parts of the code quite confusing. Probably it's due to the fact that I focused on the front-end development those last weeks and I only tried to reuse existing code without really understanding it. But when I tried to understand, ouch. It hurts !

I have the feeling there are many features which need more love, in fact I often get error messages in the server which lead to bad behavior in the front-end. Before doing deeper debugging I would like to know what do you guys think about the current state: what is ok for you, what is not ok, etc. ; maybe we should spend some time to create issues for the problems in order to keep track of what has to be done in term of bug fixing and refactoring ?

I found some problems with signing out : it keeps the old queue, it seems, or something like that, as a result when signing out and signing in again I could not add samples to the queue because they were already in. The queue is not flushed it seems. I tried to fix the problem by setting it to None in the sign out route. But it seems I am missing something still :-(

I have a question: how do you test the sample view ? Do you test it with real hardware or with the mockup ? Just starting MXCuBE 3 server with current distributed mockup files gave me an error about missing motors and the sample view didn't show. So I changed the initial state to be more tolerant to missing motors, but as far as I see there are motors in minidiff-mockup.xml so I don't understand. Maybe your mockup files are different ?

I have the feeling most problems I have are due to misconfiguration of my xml files or some misunderstandings from my side of how it should behave. I wish you could all be here: there is nothing like a bit of pair programming to solve this kind of issues.

There is a good news from ESRF: Marcus just started his work on MXCuBE 3, at the moment we are doing the Beamline Setup part. In the next days/weeks we can probably take care of more tasks.

I propose to organise a Skype meeting after Easter. And to talk about your next visit to ESRF in April, as we said.

Your turn... The ball is in you court ;)