[proposal] Blade of blades

[janhancic]

We talked about this with the team, but I haven't seen any issue created, so I'm opening it now, so it can be tracked and we can continue the conversation.

We have several use cases, where we would like to build a component, that is build out of other components. Currently you have two options:

• create each sub-component as a blade, and put the container component into the default aspect, so that you can reference the other blades (that's what we are doing at the moment)
• create a "monster" blade that contains all the functionality (that's what the FX motif is doing)

None of which is ideal (I can provide reasons if requested). So I'm proposing a new BRJS concept (name pending): Blade of blades. This would, for the most part, have the same properties as a blade, with the crucial difference of it being able to directly reference some other blades. That way I can build my smaller components in isolation, have separate test suits, workbenches etc. And then have the "master" blade glue those things together, and it also having it's own tests, workbench, etc.

/cc @james-shaw-turner @dchambers @andyberry88 @bit-shifter @adamshone

[andy-berry-dev]

Given its now possible to have Workbenches at the BladeSet level (#945) would that not allow you do to the same thing? Having Workbenches at the Library level (#950, which we're still yet to do) would also make it even easier as each component can then be made a library.

[janhancic]

Bladesets can't access blades. Neither can libraries. Unless you make everything a library. In which case, why have blades at all I guess (not that I have anything against that) :)

[andy-berry-dev]

Would this be solved in a less complicate way by just allowing BladeSets to depend on Blades? From what I can remember the idea behind BladeSets not depending on Blades was so that a Blade can be exported and imported into another app. But since we enforce the Blade has to be exported with it's BladeSet that doesn't seem to be so much of a constraint now.

Unless you make everything a library. In which case, why have blades at all I guess (not that I have anything against that) :)

This seems to be coming up over and over again. Something we should probably look at in the future.

[janhancic]

Would this be solved in a less complicate way by just allowing BladeSets to depend on Blades?

I think it would, yes.

[adamshone]

Worth mentioning that when I had a quick chat with @james-shaw-turner a couple of days ago we were thinking that since we have libraries bladesets seem pretty redundant and we'd like to move away from using them completely. They make blades less portable, e.g we can't let @janhancic's app use our trade tile without him also taking our bladeset with a load of stuff he doesn't want.

Sounds like this might be a way to redefine bladesets into something useful again.