The operator wants features gone, and 006 left it open. Measured, and the answer
is that nothing replaces them because they were never one concept.
A feature is a kind of content a module carries, detected from its directory:
twenty-one of them, each with a handler owning six stages — build, publish,
install, configure, start, verify.
The structural finding: EVERY handler implements EVERY stage. `configs` writes
files onto a node, has nothing to build, and has a build stage. `npm` publishes
to a registry, has nothing to start, and has a start stage. One interface spans
build-time and apply-time, so every kind of content must implement both halves
and most do nothing in one — and a stage that does nothing looks exactly like a
stage that failed to do anything.
They split four ways, across three tiers. Artifacts built once per version and
published, where no node is involved — delivery. Resources that are desired
state on a machine, which is what ADR 0043 already describes and the host already
does — tier 0. Actions run once against something that is not this machine, like
a migration against a database on another node — delivery, and seeds go
entirely. And checks: the prerequisites are REQUIREMENTS IN DISGUISE, a module
saying what must be true before it can be installed, which is what an edge in
the graph says; the verifiers are the read-back the host already performs.
So `feature` is one word for four things spanning three tiers, which is why the
pipeline is hard to reason about.
One property must survive the split, and it is the thing the current design got
right: content is DETECTED, relationships are DECLARED. A module that says it
has migrations and has none is a fault nobody sees until it matters — but what
it requires and provides is not visible in a directory and has to be said.
jschoubben
c9c2dfe686