can we remove manic?

[edwardhartnett]

We have a subdirectory:
rrfs-workflow/sorc/manage_externals
/manic/

This seems to be a tool for debugging repository check-ins. I believe this is not part of rrfs-workflow and should not be in this repo.

[BenjaminBlake-NOAA]

@edwardhartnett I tried removing the manic subdirectory, but then the manage_externals/checkout_externals script for retrieving the other codes (ufs-weather-model, UFS_UTILS, UPP, etc.) needed for running the workflow fails. I am not too familiar with manage_externals, but I think manic is needed based on the contents of the checkout_externals script. Do you think it should be removed though?

[MatthewPyle-NOAA]

It seems to be part of the manage_externals package - https://github.com/ESMCI/manage_externals

I think eliminating manic means going away from manage_externals. Which may not be a terrible thing.

[edwardhartnett]

What is manage_externals?

[MatthewPyle-NOAA]

Is software that clones the external repositories - really don't know much about it. Has been a part of the short range weather (SRW) app for a long time. Feel like some EMCers years ago didn't like it - felt like it was over engineered for doing something fairly simple (git clone), but the associated configure file makes it easy to check on or change a hash or branch to grab (https://github.com/NOAA-EMC/rrfs-workflow/blob/dev-sci/sorc/Externals.cfg)

[BenjaminBlake-NOAA]

I would be fine with removing manage_externals and replacing it with a simpler checkout process (we used to use a checkout.sh script) if that is the route we want to go. Global workflow does use manage_externals, but I think they use a system installation of it, and it's not actually contained within the global workflow repository.

[BenjaminBlake-NOAA]

I reached out to Kate and she told me that global workflow no longer uses manage_externals, and they instead use submodules for checking out the codes. I think rrfs-workflow could do the same. It would be simpler than manage_externals and would allow us to remove it. What do you think @edwardhartnett and @MatthewPyle-NOAA ?

[edwardhartnett]

We will be transitioning to installing as a versioned package (as with all other software). So submodules will not be needed. See #469 for further discussion.

Seems like after we transition to installation as a package, we can remove manage_externals.