Delivery is a comparison, not a pipeline: the control plane holds what source
exists and what has been built from it, and the difference is the work. Both
halves are written down now, so "is this current" is a question about two
columns rather than something you find out by building.
`status` answers "did my change go out?", which ADR 0010 names as the real risk
of replacing a pipeline with a comparison -- it is answerable today by opening
a pipeline, and something had to replace that.
zsh holds 4f2a9c1e, source has 9e3b7d2a
running on laptop
The machines are the point. A module being out of date is a fact about the
catalogue; which machines are running last week's version is the thing with
consequences.
Three things this had to get right.
A module with no source is never behind -- it was handed over directly, which
is how a one-off arrives, and saying "out of date" about it would be inventing
a comparison against nothing.
A source nobody has checked is not behind either. Reporting it as behind would
put every module on the list the moment provenance was recorded, which makes
the list say nothing. Fault injection found this: my first test passed with the
guard removed, because both halves were empty strings and compared equal. The
case that actually needed it -- a known commit and an unknown head -- was
untested.
And handing over a manifest by hand does not erase where the module normally
comes from. Fixing something in a hurry is legitimate; silently forgetting its
origin is not, because that record is the only thing that would say afterwards
that a machine is running something nobody can rebuild.
Also fixed the flag parsing, which stopped at the first positional argument and
silently ignored every flag after it -- so `module add thing.json --source x`
recorded no source at all and said it had succeeded. The host's own parser
documents this exact footgun and I wrote it again anyway.
The gap that has been named at the end of every report for a week. Until now a
declaration came from a person handing over a file; now it comes from what was
assigned, resolved against the catalogue, and the control plane is deciding
rather than relaying.
Everything from the module conversation, built and run on real machines:
assign laptop i3 -> accepted, brings xorg, because nothing else provides
it and there was no choice to make
assign laptop sway -> refused: xorg and wayland both claim the-seat
assign laptop editor -> refused: three modules provide a shell -- bash,
fish, zsh -- choose one
assign laptop zsh -> accepted, and the editor's requirement is answered
bash, fish beside it -> fine, nothing is claimed
Claims rather than pairwise exclusion, so a third display server would say what
it claims and need no edit to xorg or wayland. Scoped to node, site or mesh:
two DHCP servers at one site collide and at two sites do not, and the mesh-wide
one is the hub said as a claim instead of hard-coded.
Some conflicts cost no manifest field at all. The refusal above names the seat
AND the two files, because the mesh already holds every resource of every
module -- neither i3 nor sway knows the other exists.
Resource identities carry their module, so two modules may both call something
"config" without the second silently replacing the first. What a service
reflects is qualified the same way, or it would name a resource that no longer
exists and stop being restarted when its own configuration changes.
Nothing is sent until every node resolves. A push that configured three and
refused on the fourth would leave the mesh in a state nobody asked for, and the
fourth is exactly where a claim collision appears.
One real flaw found by using it rather than by testing it: assigning zsh did
not satisfy a requirement for a shell. Requirements were counted against the
catalogue without first asking what the set already offers, so "choose one and
assign it" named three modules and then ignored the one you chose. The remedy
was useless and every test passed.
jschoubben