RRF configuration file mirroring and management

pfn

I've been using RRF for the past year, it's great. Configuration management is a little bit of a pain, edit it in DWC or by pulling out the SD card and plopping it into my PC. This is a feature where having SBC-mode is an advantage.

But, there's no killer feature for SBC-mode, so I refuse to use it -Instead of that, I wrote a new tool that runs on any local machine that has python2: that would include macOS, Linux and some Windows computers (but untested on macOS and Windows).

What it does:

Initially downloads all files from a DWC URL under /sys and /macros to a specified directory (-m URL -d DIRECTORY)
Creates a metadata file that remembers the DWC URL and digests of all files downloaded

Now you have a local copy of your configuration, but that's not so useful yet, on top of that you can operate in the mirrored configuration folder, there are options to:

See if there are any local modifications by checking for differences in digests (run without arguments)
Refresh and download configuration from RRF again (-r option)
Edit files locally, using your choice of editor; I prefer VIM
Upload changed local files to RRF (-u argument)

Limitations:

Passwords set in RRF will prevent this from working
Local modifications will be overwritten without notice with -r
Only /sys and /macros directory trees are synchronized
There is no diffing to determine difference
- However, there is nothing to prevent the use of git or other SCM to manage configuration and tracking of changes.

Currently I have it uploaded into a gist, and perhaps it will move into a repo if it gets enough traction:
https://gist.github.com/pfn/9f28b1e8d70a9e0d1182c77af177161c

Hope someone finds this useful!

droftarts

@pfn there’s also https://forum.duet3d.com/topic/10880/rfm-reprapfirmware-filemanager-duetbackup-successor

Ian

pfn

@droftarts I never knew about this before (not the specifics anyhow). However, upon browsing rfm, the UI seems very different. In my case, I'm looking for a very "git/mercurial/other-dvcs"-like workflow where I can see what my file status looks like at any given moment with minimal/no configuration other than an "init" (-m ... -d ... ) command.

rfm looks great on its own as a general-purpose tool to fetch/upload files from RRF.

This tool itself is only intended to work with files under /sys and /macros

T3P3Tony

@pfn thanks for this. I have moved the thread to the third party software category so its less likely to get lost in the volume on General Discussion.

dc42

@pfn you may also find this interesting https://github.com/adammhaile/rrgit.

droftarts

I've added @pfn 's RRF configuration file mirroring and management tool, and @adammhaile 's rrgit to https://duet3d.dozuki.com/c/Community_Projects

Ian

pfn

@dc42 that's pretty nice as well, thanks for linking. the suggestion to use M38 is also good, but ultimately unusable because of race conditions in getting rr_gcode/rr_reply properly aligned.