novox/hq 09-the-node-lifecycle asks for this and it was missing: the host
reports what it owns and the mesh keeps the last report. A backup, never a
source -- nothing decides anything from it, and a node that disagrees with it
wins, because the node is the one that can see the machine.
Its point is the orphans. A node that loses its state file currently strands
whatever it applied: nothing on the machine knows those resources were the
mesh's doing, so nothing removes them. With this, a rebuilt node receives both
the declaration and the record of what it previously owned.
Never reported and reported nothing are kept apart, and that is the whole care
in it. A node that applied nothing holds nothing; a node that has never spoken
is unknown -- and handing back an empty list for the second would tell a
rebuilding node it owns nothing and have it remove whatever it found.
The age comes back with the answer rather than being left for the caller to go
and find. An answer about a machine is worth much less without one, and this
repository has already been bitten by a cache with no age on it.
A refusal or a partial failure moves last_seen and nothing else: neither is an
account of what the machine holds, and recording one as though it were would
tell a rebuilding node to remove what it still has.
