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@zzstoatzz zzstoatzz commented Oct 13, 2025

context

when users run prefect server start --no-services and then check prefect server services ls, the output shows services as "enabled" even though they're not actually running. this is confusing.

the issue is that services ls shows which services are configured to be enabled via environment variables, not which services are actually running.

reported by a user in slack - he was seeing all services listed as enabled even with --no-services.

changes

  • column header: "Enabled?" → "Configured?"
  • help text: clarified this shows environment variable configuration
  • footer note: explicitly states services won't run with --no-services or --workers > 1

before

Available Services                               
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳┓
┃ Name                   ┃ Enabled?                                           ┃┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇┩
│ CancellationCleanup    │ ✓ PREFECT_SERVER_SERVICES_CANCELLATION_CLEANUP_EN… ││
│ Scheduler              │ ✓ PREFECT_SERVER_SERVICES_SCHEDULER_ENABLED        ││
...

after

Available Services                               
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳┓
┃ Name                   ┃ Configured?                                        ┃┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇┩
│ CancellationCleanup    │ ✓ PREFECT_SERVER_SERVICES_CANCELLATION_CLEANUP_EN… ││
│ Scheduler              │ ✓ PREFECT_SERVER_SERVICES_SCHEDULER_ENABLED        ││
...

Note: This shows configuration via environment variables. Services will not run 
if the server was started with --no-services or --workers > 1.

related

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

…ntime state

this addresses confusion when users run `prefect server start --no-services`
and then check `prefect server services ls`, which still shows services as
"enabled" even though they're not running.

changes:
- column header: "Enabled?" → "Configured?"
- help text: clarified this shows environment variable configuration
- footer note: explicitly states services won't run with --no-services or --workers > 1

fixes the misleading output reported in slack by ryan sharp

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude <[email protected]>
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codspeed-hq bot commented Oct 13, 2025

CodSpeed Performance Report

Merging #19160 will not alter performance

Comparing clarify-services-ls-output (8ba89be) with main (1821ce5)

Summary

✅ 2 untouched

@zzstoatzz zzstoatzz marked this pull request as ready for review October 13, 2025 21:50
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This is good for clarification, but we should probably have a command that shows which services are currently running.

table = Table(title="Available Services", expand=True)
table.add_column("Name", no_wrap=True)
table.add_column("Enabled?", no_wrap=True)
table.add_column("Configured?", no_wrap=True)
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I prefer Enabled? over Configured?. I think that the message below clearly communicates the information that's being displayed and Enabled? makes more sense.

Suggested change
table.add_column("Configured?", no_wrap=True)
table.add_column("Enabled?", no_wrap=True)

Comment on lines +749 to +751
"\n[dim]Note: This shows configuration via environment variables. "
"Services will not run if the server\n"
" was started with --no-services or --workers > 1.[/dim]"
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Suggested change
"\n[dim]Note: This shows configuration via environment variables. "
"Services will not run if the server\n"
" was started with --no-services or --workers > 1.[/dim]"
"\n[dim]Note: This shows services enabled via the current settings, not running status."
"Services will not run if the server\n"
" was started with --no-services or --workers > 1.[/dim]"

"""
List all available services and their configuration status.
This shows which services are configured to be enabled via environment variables.
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Suggested change
This shows which services are configured to be enabled via environment variables.
This shows which services are configured to be enabled via the current settings.

@zzstoatzz zzstoatzz marked this pull request as draft October 14, 2025 15:46
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This pull request is stale because it has been open 14 days with no activity. To keep this pull request open remove stale label or comment.

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3 participants