Unified Open R&D: investigate approaches on how to implement strong module boundaries

[rhysyngsun]

See also: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pHTqQ3nWT348RyTLcCdUH9gHjLU7erKfqqa2oXiz_qY/edit

We've had conversations around utilizing a plugin system to achieve decoupling of various pieces of functionality. There's a few things we need to follow up on that will give us a clearer picture of how this will look in practice:

• Plugins work great for side effects, but sometimes you need to just make a function call (e.g. to fetch some data). What is a good set of guidelines on how to build well-defined module boundaries for when an internal API call needs to be made that doesn't fit into the plugin strategy?

  • Can some of this be accomplished with a linter? https://github.com/seddonym/import-linter

• What design strategies can we use that make error handling less complex and safe by default?

  • Circuit breaker pattern?
    • https://github.com/danielfm/pybreaker
    • https://github.com/fabfuel/circuitbreaker
    • Others?
  • How can we augment pluggy to give error boundaries by default?