jschoubben
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The consolidation left a sparse sequence -- 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 25, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 58 -- where the gaps were only the archaeology of what used to be there. Renumbered contiguously. Renames run in ascending order, so every target number is already free and no two files ever collide. The reference rewrite is one simultaneous pass rather than a sequence of replacements. Numbers moved into slots other numbers were vacating -- the node host went 37 to 16 while the lab went 16 to 9 -- so replacing one at a time would have cascaded and silently pointed things at the wrong record. Seven plain-text references survived the merges as prose rather than links, naming records that no longer existed: the enrolment token, the link boundary, what a declaration is, reachability, the repository structure. Each mapped to the consolidated record that now holds it. Verified rather than assumed: every [ADR NNNN](path) link now has matching text and target, checked across the whole repository, and the checker passes. Frontmatter `consolidates:` lists dropped -- they named records that are gone, and each consolidated record already says in prose what it absorbed.
5.4 KiB
status, date, deciders, reconstructed
| status | date | deciders | reconstructed |
|---|---|---|---|
| accepted | 2026-08-23 | jochen | false |
10. The mesh creates no symlinks — a derived file is a copy
Context
ADR 0010 responded to production data loss — a hand-made link, resolved through a container engine's volume handling, pointing a mount somewhere it should not have — by centralising linking in the installer and forbidding it everywhere else.
That narrowed the incident class. It did not close it. The hazard is not who made the link; it is that a path can resolve somewhere other than where it appears to. A link made by the installer resolves exactly the same way as a link made by hand. The rule made the mechanism rarer and better-governed while leaving the mechanism in place.
Two things have changed since, and together they remove the argument that kept it.
The original case for linking was staleness. A copy of a service definition goes stale silently while the catalogue moves on, so a link was the cheap way to guarantee the running node reads a current definition. That argument assumes the node's copy is unmanaged.
It is not. ADR 0002 established that everything on a node's disk is derived from the mesh and regenerated when its inputs change, and the installer already reconciles links rather than assuming them — repointing stale ones, adopting real files it finds where a link belongs. Reconciling content is the same operation as reconciling a pointer, plus a comparison.
So the mesh already has the machinery that makes a copy safe, and is using a link to solve a problem that machinery solves better. Worse, a link is conceptually the wrong shape: it makes the node's runtime state a pointer into source, which is the one thing ADR 0021 and ADR 0002 exist to prevent. State is derived onto nodes; it does not reach back.
Considered options
- Keep ADR 0011 as the final position — centralised linking, forbidden elsewhere. Rejected as the status quo. It governs the mechanism rather than removing it, and the failure it was written for remains reachable by any code path the installer trusts.
- Keep links but harden them — canonicalise before mounting, refuse a link that escapes an expected root. Rejected: it is a check bolted onto a hazard, and it has to be correct in every consumer, including container engines the mesh does not control.
- Copy, reconciled by the installer, with staleness detected rather than assumed away. Proposed here.
Decision
Accepted 2026-08-25. The position is settled; the migration is not designed. See "Open" below.
The mesh creates no symlinks. A file a node needs is placed on that node as a real file, derived from the mesh and reconciled by the installer like every other managed file (ADR 0002).
The prohibition in ADR 0011 stands and widens: it ceases to be "only the installer may link" and becomes "nothing links, the installer included".
When this is accepted, ADR 0011 becomes superseded rather than edited — its reasoning is why the rule exists at all, and the incident behind it is the reason anyone believes either record.
Consequences
- The path-resolution hazard is removed rather than governed. There is no link for a container engine to resolve, so the class of failure that cost production data is closed by construction.
- A node's runtime state stops pointing into source. What a node holds is derived output, which is what the mesh's model already says it is everywhere else.
- Staleness becomes a real problem that must be answered, not assumed away. This is the cost, and it is the whole cost: today a link cannot be stale, and a copy can. The answer has to be detection — the installer comparing what is on disk against what the mesh says should be — and it must be loud, because a silently stale definition is exactly the failure shape this mesh keeps producing (ADR 0023).
- Reconciliation gets more expensive: comparing content rather than checking a pointer's target, on every module, on every node.
- Disk usage rises, trivially, and is not a consideration.
- Existing links must be converted. A node mid-migration holds both forms, so reconciliation has to handle finding a link where a file now belongs — the mirror image of the adoption it already does.
Open
- How staleness is detected. Content hash, version marker, or regeneration on every reconcile. This is the decision that makes or breaks the change and it is not taken here.
- Whether anything must keep a link for reasons outside the mesh's control. If something does, that is a finding worth recording rather than an exception worth granting quietly.
- Migration order. Converting a node's links is a change to how its services resolve their own definitions, which is not a change to make everywhere at once.
Until those are answered this record stays proposed, and ADR 0011 remains the governing rule.
References
- ADR 0010 — the incident, and the rule this widens.
- ADR 0002 — the machinery that makes a copy safe.
03-DESIGN/00-as-is/05-runtime-and-installation.md— what the installer does today, including reconciliation and adoption.