hyperhive/swarm-queue-client
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atlas e23a70e488 refactor(swarm-queue-client): share the connected-client precondition
An unconnected client does not fail a JetStream request, it hangs on it:
`retry_on_initial_connect` hands back a client before it is usable, and a
request made in that window waits (measured: still going at 15s against a
queue that refuses the credential). The controller guarded its read path
against that inline. Every consumer of the queue needs the same guard, so
it is not one daemon's to keep.

It matters more off a request path than on one. A hung request inside a
periodic task never reaches its `select!`, so the shutdown branch becomes
unreachable and the task cannot be stopped at all — where a request path
merely times a poll out.

The test is `!= Connected`, never `== Disconnected`: a client that has
never connected sits in `Pending`, so the `Disconnected` form passes it
straight through to the hang it was written to prevent — which is exactly
the boot-order case the guard exists for. Not feature-gated;
`connection_state()` is core async-nats.
2026-08-16 13:12:59 +02:00
..
src refactor(swarm-queue-client): share the connected-client precondition 2026-08-16 13:12:59 +02:00
Cargo.toml refactor(swarm-queue-client): share the hive-status bucket's name and shape 2026-08-16 13:12:59 +02:00
README.md refactor(swarm-queue-client): share the hive-status bucket's name and shape 2026-08-16 13:12:59 +02:00

swarm-queue-client

Connecting to the swarm message queue as an authenticated client. Shared by every process that participates: the swarm controller reads hive status out of the queue, a hive publishes its own status into it.

Why a crate and not a module per binary

The connect is identical for every participant — mint an authelia token, present it at CONNECT for the auth_callout responder to introspect, let async-nats re-run the callback on each connection attempt. Only the use differs.

Two copies of that would be two copies of credential handling, and a token-refresh fix would have to be found twice. The same reasoning already put hive-sock-client in its own crate rather than in each daemon that speaks to a unix socket.

The two properties that constrain the code

A token expires. Authelia issues client_credentials access tokens with expires_in: 3599. Authentication happens at CONNECT, so a long-lived connection is fine — but a reconnect an hour later needs a token minted an hour later.

The refresh therefore lives in the auth callback, not in a timer. async-nats invokes it per connection attempt, so there is no window in which the client holds a token it minted for a previous connection. The alternative — mint once, own the reconnect loop — fails in the way this subsystem exists to prevent: the process keeps serving while its data quietly stops moving, and nothing says so until someone reads a dashboard.

Configuration

QueueConfig::from_env(prefix) reads <prefix>_NATS_URL, <prefix>_OIDC_TOKEN_ENDPOINT, <prefix>_OIDC_CLIENT_ID and <prefix>_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET_FILE.

The prefix is a parameter because the variables belong to the consuming unit — a NixOS module sets them alongside its other options. What is shared is the rule, not the spelling: all four together or none at all. A half-set environment is a hard error, because the failure it would otherwise produce is the expensive kind — the process comes up "fine", never connects, and the data it was supposed to move silently stops.

The client secret is a path, not a value: putting it in the environment would publish it to anything that can read /proc/<pid>/environ. It is read per token request rather than cached, so a rotation the operator believes took effect actually did.

What this crate does not do

It ends at a connected client. jetstream/kv are off by default — what a consumer does with the connection is its own business, and its Cargo.toml is where that requirement should be visible. The auth-callout responder speaks the connect and nothing else, and pays for nothing else.

The one exception: the kv feature

kv adds status, which holds the name and the creation config of the hive-status bucket — nothing more.

It is here because that bucket has two ends in two crates: a hive writes its own key, the controller reads every key. The name being a repeated literal is the mild half of the problem; the sharp half is that either end may arrive first on a fresh swarm, so both create the bucket if it is missing. Two Configs that drift means whichever end created it wins and the other opens a bucket it did not ask for — no error, no log, just a retention policy nobody chose.

An agreement between two crates has to live in one of them, and neither end of this bucket is senior to the other. Behind a default-off feature, the consumer that needs none of it still pays nothing.