Do we really need daq-config-server dependency in dodal?

[Villtord]

Currently daq-config-server is a package dependency in dodal, howerer I think initially the daq-config-server was more of a "software as a service" (correct me if I am wrong). Ideally all we need to get a lookuptable from server is to make a get request to an endpoint of a server, so we do not actually need the whole package to be imported to dodal but instead just an http request (can be a sort of light client as well). Does it make sense?

[DominicOram]

I sort of agree. I think we should instead expose a client version so that we can do something like pip install daq-config-server[client] and get just the bits needed for a nice client. This would mean:

• There's more standardisation on how people are calling the server
• If we find some common logic we might want (e.g. caching) we can put that in the client for everyone
• If we make breaking client/server changes we can update the client people use and then downstream just has to do an upgrade rather than change their code

I think this is generally how we should do our APIs e.g. do the same for BlueAPI etc. I don't mean to say people can't just use the REST calls if they like, we should still let them but sometimes its nicer to have a prebuilt client.

[olliesilvester]

Right now we have the dependency in dodal so that dodal can use the client class and use the model classes.

The config class could be defined anywhere really, we just thought it should go in this repo so that things other than dodal could use it.

As for the model classes, as it is right now, the server itself uses these to tell it how to convert things. Dodal also needs to use them so it can request that the server correctly converts the files.

I think we should instead expose a client version so that we can do something like pip install daq-config-server[client]

This sounds good. That can install both bits I just mentioned

[Villtord]

yes model classes are currently binding both repos and make them depend on each other in one or another way