Should Agent#reset raise by default

[ysbaddaden]

Should Agent#reset raise by default

[RX14]

It comes down to the question of if most agents are stateless, and as such don't need to be reset, or if most agents are stateful and a common source of errors is forgetting to override reset.

I'd tend to believe the latter - and having to override reset to do # nothing isn't too much of a burden. Given how really every agent is designed to be in a supervision tree, it might even be best to make reset abstract and force everyone to implement it. It seems a bit of a drastic measure but it's hard to tell.

So for now I'd guess this is fine as-is, until more real-world experience of how often forgetting to override #reset happens in production.

[ysbaddaden]

I assumed that agents didn't need to reset something when they're recycled. This applies to most of the design: have noop methods that can be overridden if needed —except call obviously.

But maybe I'm wrong.

[ysbaddaden]

Agents don't need to be supervised, so an abstract #reset feels too drastic.

Looking at a real application using Earl I have, only 1 out of the 4 agent types needs to reset it's internal state —reconnect to an AMQP server because it's likely what crashed the agent. Others are stateless.

[ysbaddaden]

Flagged as wontfix for now. This needs more evidence from real applications.