Adding a no-backend option for checking a site about green-metrics-tool

[ArneTR]

Hmm, now reading this I am not exactly sure anymore if I understood you correct initially:

• Are you proposing a more easy CLI based interface to submit jobs to the cluster? If so somehow the command must provide all the infos that must be typed in on https://metrics.green-coding.io/request.html
• Or are you suggesting a CLI command that is specifically targeted at looking at websites. Using the GMT measurement infrastructure to spin up a browser, visit a page, log all energy data while doing so?

[mrchrisadams]

Hi @arne

It might help to look at the workshop I delivered at Djangocon 2024 when showing folks how to use some of these tools:

Here's the link to the deck (it's quite long - see slides 46 - 60 for a little more context).
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mn1Qsr_vZ0lkFvIDZu5aEOginHFCpr4V/edit#slide=id.p1

That workshop introduces people to using some tools to look at a website, and use the information recorded to draw some conclusions about the carbon footprint of usage, starting with tooling like WebPageTest, then introducing people to GMT as a way to look at the full stack, instead of only relying on data transfer:

If it helps, I used this diagram below to explain how people with existing django apps can implement some of this, but as the diagram suggests, there are really two separate things people need to get meaningful numbers for web apps:

1. an easily reproducible set of server-side components, that are somewhat representative of a live site prepopulated with data (the stuff on the left)
2. some knowledge of how to drive a browser with code for repeatable steps, and some understanding of the usage_scenario.yml file format

I'm suggesting something on the right hand side - so that people can start using GMT to try running measurement runs in a setup that doesn't just rely on data transfer as the proxy, but still provides a degree of reproducibility.

I'm hoping the repo linked below gives some extra context at what I'm after, but I'll also be in Berlin next week. I'm happy to chat over lunch 👍

https://github.com/mrchrisadams/gmt-check-a-website