How do we make Mona setup easier?

[caseywatson]

Howdy, Mona users! We are working internally to make Mona (and Turnstile) setup easier. The key question revolves around the use of the cloud shell, setup dependencies, and supporting existing CI/CD Mona deployments. We are considering enforcing cloud shell deployment (see #83) to simplify the management of setup dependencies (see #79, #81). Today, the doc specifically states to run Mona setup from the cloud shell but we want to make sure that we're not limiting deployment options unnecessarily.

cc @tfsjohan

[Josverl]

The downside of only a cloud-shell deployment would be that that creates a likely to be orphaned git clone in a cloud shell disk somewhere.
while it is good to get up-n-running quickly, i do not think that should be the end-state.

(also the Turnstile link points back to the mona repo, is that intentional ?)

[tfsjohan]

What would be a scenario when you've made customizations and don't want to run it from Cloud Shell again? CI/CD pipelines?
How often do people do custom modifications? I guess they would need to to modify the landing page.

[caseywatson]

This is an interesting take, @Josverl. Should we do a better job of cleaning up after ourselves post-installation?

[tfsjohan]

Voted "Warn", but I don't think we should list dependencies, since it's too likely we'll forget to maintain that list over time. Maybe the warning should just state that it's recommended to run in Cloud Shell and that you might run into errors if you're missing dependencies.