JS/CSS dependencies management in mesa-geo

[wang-boyu]

What's the problem this feature will solve?

Some JS/CSS files and their corresponding python modules are copied over from mesa, and may be incomplete or out-of-date.

This also leads to confusion from users on which frontend files belong to mesa-geo (e.g. projectmesa/mesa#1537).

Describe the solution you'd like

The solution will depend on how mesa manages the frontend files in the future.

Besides, there have been some fixes and some ongoing efforts to improve the frontend elements in mesa, such as

• Model properties and/or model parameters as arguments for VisualisationElements mesa#1216
• JS refactor: We should replace all usage of var x = ... with const / let in the JS code mesa#1232
• UX: Simplify TextElement usage mesa#1233
• UX: Split UserSettableParameter into various classes mesa#1235
• CI: we should lint-check the JS files using eslint mesa-viz-tornado#16

These fixes and improvements should be automatically applied to mesa-geo.

Lastly, the solution should be flexible in that, extensions and modifications to existing frontend elements can be done easily in mesa-geo.

Additional context

• Install JS dependencies using Fanstatic mesa#1195

[rht]

I ended up doing projectmesa/mesa#1220 instead of using Fanstatic because its JS packages are outdated. Follow up: projectmesa/mesa#1236.

[wang-boyu]

Thanks for the update!

[wang-boyu]

This issue is partly addressed in #54, with the exception of visualization/templates/modular_template.html which still needs to be manually updated to be in sync with Mesa.

To do:

• Have visualization/templates/modular_template.html copied from Mesa during setup, as soon as CSS support for custom visualization element mesa#1267 is implemented.