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hq/04-ISSUES/127-a-module-event-derives-a-subject-nothing-publishes/00-report.md
T
jschoubben f555d523c7 WBS 3.4 is done both halves; issue 127 holds 4.2, 4.3 and catch-up
The controller's inbound is through a seam with both transports behind it, and
the store window is now the server's rather than the controller's memory. Seven
claims about that were asked of a running server rather than reasoned.

Wiring the controller's own subscription is what found issue 127: every event
name in the catalogue is still written the way a routing key is, so design 29's
derivation turns a consumer's declaration into a subject no emitter publishes.
Thirty-seven manifests, one that cannot be composed at all. It fails on the first
mesh raised on the new bus and not before, which is why nothing had caught it —
the conformance fixtures pin one emitter against one subject, and both halves of
that pair are correct.

The node-facing flows are unaffected: those subjects are the mesh's own and
derive from nothing a module declares.
2026-09-27 00:55:07 +02:00

5.6 KiB

status, opened, located-in, fixed-by, amended-design
status opened located-in fixed-by amended-design
open 2026-09-27

127 — A module's event derives a subject nothing publishes

What was observed

Design 29 §1 says a module names an event locally and the mesh derives the subject: emits: order.placed becomes mesh.mod.<module>.event.order.placed, and a consumer declaring consumes: shop.order.placed subscribes the emitter's own subject. That derivation is built and tested.

Every event name in the catalogue is still written the way a routing key on the bus the mesh has is written — module.<module>.<verb> — and the derivation reads it as <emitter>.<event>. Asked of the composer directly, with the module names and declarations the catalogue holds today:

declared derived
builder emits module.builder.built publish mesh.mod.builder.event.module.builder.built
the catalogue consumes module.builder.built subscribe mesh.mod.module.event.builder.built
a media module emits module.<itself>.download.completed publish mesh.mod.<itself>.event.module.<itself>.download.completed
a player consumes module.*.download.completed subscribe mesh.mod.module.event.*.download.completed

The consumer's subject names a module called module. No cross-module subscription in the catalogue matches what any emitter publishes. Thirty-seven manifests declare events; every one of their consume declarations derives this way.

Two further consequences of the same cause, found in the same check:

  • One module declares consumes: "#" — the wildcard of the bus the mesh has, which is not a subject at all. The composer refuses it outright, so that module's account cannot be composed and the module cannot be assigned.
  • One module emits under a name that is not its own — it declares module.<other>.image.pushed while being a differently named module — which the derivation puts inside its namespace. Whether that is legitimate is a design question: design 29 §2 makes an event's source a fact the server enforces, and this is a module claiming another's name in its own event.

None of it fails on the bus the mesh runs on today, where a routing key is matched literally and nothing derives anything. It fails only once the subject is derived — which is to say it fails on the first mesh raised on the new bus, and not before.

Evidence: run against the controller's own PermissionsFor on the current feature branch, with the declarations read from the catalogue's manifests. Found while wiring the controller's consume side (design 28 step 3.4), when the controller's own subscription had to be written and the subject it would have to name turned out not to be the one design 29 specifies.

Why it matters beyond this instance

This is the failure ADR 0074 exists to catch, arriving by a route the conformance suite does not cover. Two implementations that disagree about an envelope do not fail to compile — they ignore each other while both keep running. Here it is not two implementations disagreeing but a declaration and a derivation disagreeing, and the symptom is identical: every service starts, every log is quiet, and nothing reacts to anything.

The fixtures cannot catch it. They pin one emitter's envelope against one subject, and both halves of that pair are correct. What is wrong is only visible when an emitter's derived subject is set beside a consumer's derived subject — a check nothing performs, because until the subject was derived there was nothing to compare.

It also means the rule 3.8 established is weaker than it reads. That task asserted no manifest contains a subject, which holds: a manifest contains a local name. What nothing asserts is that a local name derives to a subject some emitter actually publishes, and the rule as stated is satisfied by thirty-seven manifests whose names derive to nothing.

And it blocks work already scheduled. Design 28's step 4.2 (a build source's change reaching the builder over the bus) and 4.3 (an installation completing over the bus) are both event flows through exactly these pairs, and the catch-up flow the controller answers is a third — the controller currently replays a build announcement under its own name rather than the builder's, which a consumer filtering the builder's subject will not hear either.

Open questions

  • Is a local name converted per manifest (emits: built), or does the derivation keep accepting the old form and strip a redundant prefix? The first is thirty-seven manifests and a rule that can be checked; the second is a rule that cannot, because module.foo.bar is also a legitimate three-part local name.
  • What checks the pair? An emitter's derived subject against every consumer's derived subject is a whole-catalogue check, not a per-manifest one — and a module lives in its own repository and may be registered long after the catalogue was checked.
  • What are # and * in a consumed name? The bus the mesh has and the bus being built spell wildcards differently, and a consumes pattern is the one place a module writes one.
  • May a module emit an event named after another module, and if not, what does the module that does it today declare instead?
  • Who replays? A catch-up answer published by the controller under a builder's subject is the controller signing an event as another module, which is the thing the derived namespace prevents. If it must not, then a replay is a different message from an announcement, and the consumer needs to be told so.