jschoubben
a794ef9a3f
It reported "N machines run an older host than another" by comparing versions as strings. A host reports its version as a commit, and commits have no order. On the live mesh it named the three machines running the NEWER host as the ones behind — ced54d4 sorts above 04a27ca and that is all it means. The code even carried a caveat saying versions compare as strings and that this "is enough for the timestamps and commits this mesh uses". That was the error, written down and not noticed: enough for timestamps, meaningless for commits, and the mesh reports commits. It now reports the split and claims no ordering, which is more useful as well as more honest — the reader sees who is on which side, and that is what decides whether a field can be sent. Ordering is left with the host, which would have to report something ordered for anybody to have it. This is issue 145 arriving by my own door an hour after I closed it: a report that confidently says the opposite of the truth is worse than one that says less.
04-ISSUES
The front door for "something is wrong" at the level of the mesh's design or governance. Diagnosis happens here, where the whole mesh is in view; the fix lands in the owning code repository.
What belongs here
| Belongs here | Belongs in the knowledge base |
|---|---|
| The design permits a failure to be silent | How to fix one occurrence of it |
| A documented rule is enforced by nothing | A command that works around it |
| A stated invariant is false in practice | A node-specific quirk |
| The owner is unknown and finding it needs the whole mesh in view | Symptom → fix, once the answer is known |
The knowledge base already holds the operational record and is indexed on symptoms. This folder is not a second copy of it. An issue here is a question HQ must answer; an entry there is an incident someone must clear. An issue whose answer is a general lesson belongs in both.
Structure
NNN-short-name/
00-report.md the symptom as observed, with the evidence; status in frontmatter
01-diagnosis.md the investigation trail, dated, including what was ruled out
Frontmatter, on 00-report.md
---
status: open | diagnosing | located | resolved | wontfix
opened: YYYY-MM-DD
located-in: [] # owning repo(s) or module(s), filled by diagnosis
fixed-by: # pull request or commit reference, filled at resolution
amended-design: # design doc path, when the root cause was a design gap
---
Rules
- Anyone may open an issue. No localisation is required to report one.
- The full flow is playbook
00-META/process/03-issues.md. - Closed issues are never deleted — they are the mesh's symptom-to-component memory.
wontfixis legitimate and requires a sentence saying why.