022 turned out to have a silent half worth recording: the provider
refuses loudly and names the modules, which reads as a decision, while
the consuming node does not refuse at all. Three modules wanting one
database produce one need, so two of them get no credential file and
each starts and fails to authenticate with nothing saying why.
023 is what remained after fixing it. A consumer now gets its own
password, in whatever shape its configuration wants, and still cannot
connect: the user name is invented by the provisioner and recorded
nowhere in the mesh, and the host and port sit in a JSON binding that an
application reading KEY=value cannot use.
The asymmetry is backwards and the coverage document now says so. The
secret is the hard case, because the mesh must not be able to read it,
and the secret is the part that arrives. The host and port are ordinary
facts the mesh holds in the clear, and they are the ones stuck.
Keycloak, Gitea, Mailu and MinIO all parse and resolve and none of them
can start. This is what stands between the module set and a running one.
Every manifest in the system being replaced was read and every key
counted, then set against what the new one can express. Three findings
worth more than the table.
**The most-used key was already covered and I expected a gap.**
Depending on another module — 65 manifests, the commonest thing any of
them says — is a requirement naming a module, which already means that
module rather than anything providing the name.
**The largest real gap is tool servers: 56 modules, over half.** A
module can already run one; what is missing is anything saying it offers
tools. That is plausibly a provision rather than new vocabulary, which
would need nothing added — not yet decided, and recorded as undecided.
**The gap most worth closing is health, at seven modules.** The mesh
knows a container is running, which is not whether it answers, and this
project has paid for that distinction twice. An action with a verify is
exactly the right shape and may not arrive over the link, so a module
cannot declare one.
Two things are missing deliberately and say so: stage hooks, because the
link may not carry an action and a module needing setup ships a program;
and flavours, retired in favour of claims.
Config merging is missing and should stay missing. A mechanism that
understands TOML gets asked for YAML, then INI, which is how the thing
being replaced became unholdable.
Also records what the survey found that is not about coverage: manifests
that had stopped matching what was actually brokered, one fact derived
in two places giving two answers, and a live listing returning
credentials in plaintext.
jschoubben