jschoubben
ed094031fd
The runtime beside the forge served 0 tools: GiteaClient.fromEnv required a token
(settings or MESH_GITEA_TOKEN), nobody had one to give — the mesh raised the forge —
and putting one in settings would store a secret in plaintext in the inventory. So
the fifteen tools registered nothing and the watcher logged "not watching".
What the mesh does deliver is the admin account: a login the manifest names and a
password the vault minted and the host unsealed into a file (ADR 0086). That is
enough to mint a token, so the module does (hq issue 100, the forge's tools):
POST /users/{admin}/tokens over basic auth, scoped to write:repository and
write:issue — the least the tools and the repo watcher need — kept at 0600 in the
module's own state (/var/lib/mesh/gitea/state, a new directory resource the runtime
mounts writable), read back on the next start, and minted afresh when the forge
answers 401 to it or the kept file is gone. A forge whose data came from the
predecessor has no mesh-admin: that is reported in plain words on every poll until
it clears, once per reason, not crash-looped. A configured token still wins and is
never minted over.
The mint happens on the first call, not at registration: a contributor is
synchronous, and a forge not yet answering must not keep the runtime from serving.
One source per kept file in a process, or the watcher and the tools would each
renew on a 401 and drop the other's token by name.
mesh-catalog
The Novox Mesh catalogue. The modules the mesh builds, provisions and runs — as manifests, one
per module under modules/.
This is data, not a control-plane concern. The manifests describe what a module is: what it
provides, what it requires, the seats it claims, the resources the host applies for it. The
engine that reads them — parsing, eligibility resolution, sealing, declaration emission — lives
in the control plane (novox/mesh-controller, internal/catalogue), which consumes this repository
as a build source. The host (novox/mesh-host) applies the declarations the control plane emits.
Neither is here.
What a module is, and is not
A module is one thing the mesh can run, named once, described completely by its manifest. A
manifest names its image (pinned by digest), the resources the host owns for it (directories,
files, the container, the private network it joins), what it requires from a provider and what
it provides to consumers, and the sealed secrets it needs filled on the machine.
- Core mesh components are not modules. The node host, the foundation, the control-plane
contexts and the surfaces are the mesh itself; they ship as their own repositories
(
mesh-host,mesh-foundation,mesh-controller,mesh-surfaces,mesh-sdk), not from here. - Standalone applications are not here either. A larger application lives in its own repository with its manifest at the root, registered with the mesh as a build source (novox/hq ADR 0010). This repository holds the modules the mesh maintains as its shared catalogue; an application the mesh merely hosts keeps its manifest beside its own code.
So there is one home for the catalogue the mesh owns, and every application that runs on the mesh rather than being of it carries its own — both reach the pipeline the same way, as a registered source.
Layout
modules/<name>.json one manifest per module
Flat, because the catalogue's shape carries no meaning: a module is found by its name and described by its manifest, and what relates two modules — a shared seat, a claim, a provider/consumer edge — is data inside the manifests, not a directory the tree encodes (novox/hq, the domain-grouping question closed in favour of seats, claims and tags).
The manifest contract
The shape a manifest must satisfy is owned by the control plane's catalogue engine and is what
validates a manifest before a machine ever sees it — a stray key, a consumer contributing the
wrong provision field, an image that nothing builds. That validation belongs with this
repository and is being re-homed here from mesh-controller; until it is, the pipeline is the
gate — it builds each module and refuses a manifest it cannot resolve.
Where the reasoning lives
Design and decisions are in novox/hq:
02-DECISIONS/0002-everything-is-a-module.md— one unit, no second mechanism02-DECISIONS/0010-applications-live-in-their-own-repository.md— why applications are not here02-DECISIONS/0030-the-repository-structure.md— the repositories, and the open tier-4 question this repository answers03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md— the catalogue's shape, and what it records