2026-09-16 21:25:51 +00:00
1 changed files with 16 additions and 6 deletions
@@ -42,11 +42,20 @@ control plane's again. The builder's whole responsibility is the middle.

 ## What the model is today, and where it does not fit

-**A recipe is implicit, singular, and always a Dockerfile.** `build.artifacts[].from` names one, and
-producing anything means writing one. **A toolchain is not modelled at all** — it arrives as two
-build arguments the module's own Dockerfile declares and the mesh fills in. **A language is not a
-concept.** And **an archive is declared and unbuildable**: the manifest has the kind, the builder
-refuses it.
+**A toolchain is not modelled at all** — it arrives as two build arguments the module's own
+Dockerfile declares and the mesh fills in. **A language is not a concept.** And a recipe is
+effectively singular: producing anything *compiled* means writing a Dockerfile.
+
+**Archives already work, and that is the corrected half of this.** An earlier draft of this
+document said the builder refused them. It does not: an archive is packed deterministically,
+hashed, published by digest, fetched by the machine and unpacked. Only the *local* builder used at
+genesis refuses one, deliberately — an archive is bytes that mean nothing until something serves
+them, and there is no registry yet.
+
+**What an archive cannot do is compile.** `from` names a directory and the directory is packed as
+it stands, so shipping compiled output means compiling somewhere first — which means a Dockerfile,
+which is the burden this is about. The gap is not the artifact kind. It is that **no recipe both
+builds and packs**.

 The cost is not theoretical. To add a module that carries its own code today, an author writes a
 Dockerfile that: declares two `ARG` bases with no defaults; compiles under a specific working
@@ -72,7 +81,8 @@ modelling one of ten resource kinds and calling it the module.
 | recipe | produces | from |
 |---|---|---|
 | `image` | an image | a Dockerfile, when the software genuinely needs one |
-| `archive` | a bundle, fetched by digest and unpacked | this module's source, compiled and bundled |
+| `archive` | a bundle, fetched by digest and unpacked | a directory, packed as it stands — **today** |
+| `bundle` | the same, fetched and unpacked | this module's source, *compiled* by a toolchain and then packed — **the missing one** |
 | `upstream` | a mirror | somebody else's pinned reference |

 **Toolchain becomes explicit, and is derived rather than written.** A module says what it is written