[Core]Separate Environment Variables for ray.init() and ray ctl to Reflect Different Protocols and Ports

[Louis-Zhu]

Description

Currently, both ray.init() and ray ctl rely on the same environment variable RAY_ADDRESS to determine the default address to connect to a Ray cluster. However, in practice:

ray.init() uses the ray:// protocol and connects via the GCS gRPC port (default 10001)
ray ctl uses the HTTP protocol (http://) and connects via the Dashboard port (default 8265)
This leads to potential confusion when setting the RAY_ADDRESS environment variable, as it may not be valid for both tools simultaneously. For example, setting RAY_ADDRESS=http://localhost:8265 would work for ray ctl, but not for ray.init(), which expects a ray:// URI with the GCS port.

Suggestion
To improve usability and reduce ambiguity, I propose that we separate the environment variables used by these two interfaces:

Use RAY_ADDRESS for ray.init() (defaulting to ray://localhost:10001)
Use RAY_DASHBOARD_ADDRESS for ray ctl (defaulting to http://localhost:8265)
This change would allow users and applications to configure connection addresses independently based on their use case, avoiding unnecessary errors and improving clarity in environments where both tools are used.

Let me know if this proposal makes sense to the team or if there are existing plans to address this inconsistency.

Thanks!

generated by Qwen

Use case

No response

[jjyao]

@Louis-Zhu are you willing to contribute here? As you suggested, we can introduce a new env var called RAY_API_SERVER_ADDRESS and use it for cli.

[BACHYY]

Hi @jjyao I am new here and looking for good-first-issues to learn the codebase. Can I take this issue?

[machichima]

Hi @BACHYY ,

Are you currently working on this? If not, I would love to try.

Thanks!

[Louis-Zhu]

Hi @BACHYY ,

Are you currently working on this? If not, I would love to try.

Thanks!

Feel free to take it! Just a heads-up that this issue is a bit complex — the environment is used in quite a few places, so you might need to check multiple spots. Good luck with it! :)