jschoubben
f0665ba956
Piece A + B of ADR 0056, completing the internal-CA work in ff01ada.
Selectable issuer. acme-ca is now a role two providers can satisfy: step-ca
(internal CA) or the new public-acme (a fact-only module, no container/listen)
that serves Let's Encrypt production. A mesh assigns one or the other to satisfy
route-proxy's `requires: acme-ca`.
One directory shape for both. A provider serves the ACME directory's parts the
way the mesh already models any reachable service -- an address (`at`), a `port`
and a `path` -- and route-proxy composes `https://<at>:<port><path>`. step-ca
lets the mesh fill `at` (its node) and `port` (its single listen) and serves only
`path`; public-acme, not being a mesh service, serves all three (overriding `at`
with the public host). Same composition either way.
Empty root means the system trust store. Both providers serve `root`: step-ca
the operator root PEM (settled per mesh), public-acme an empty string. route-proxy
writes it to the CA bundle file unconditionally; the binary now reads an empty
bundle as "the root is already trusted by the OS" and falls back to system roots
(examples/route-proxy/main.go, committed on the mesh-control ADR-0056 branch).
step-ca inits from the operator's root. The operator's root cert, root key and
root-key password are mounted at the smallstep entrypoint's default init paths
(/run/secrets/root_ca.crt, root_ca_key, root_ca_key_password) with the matching
DOCKER_STEPCA_INIT_*_FILE vars, so `step ca init` adopts the operator's root
instead of self-generating one -- the CA that signs is the CA route-proxy trusts.
Route names are labels, not FQDNs. Every routed module now contributes a `label`
(the leftmost subdomain) instead of a full public hostname; the node's public
domain composes the name. Apex (novox.be) is left as a full name -- composeName
has no empty-label/apex convention yet (mesh-control follow-up).
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
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-control, 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 substrate, the control-plane
contexts and the surfaces are the mesh itself; they ship as their own repositories
(
mesh-host,mesh-substrate,mesh-control,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-control; 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