Files
siftlode/backend/app
peter 915319fa35 fix(plex): make the HW->SW fallback supersede-check atomic; honest cull yield
Deep-review round 2 on the round-1 fix:

- Race (medium): the round-1 identity guard did the supersede check and the
  respawn in TWO separate _lock sections. A newer same-key session installed in
  the gap was still torn down by _spawn's unconditional pop+kill (the round-1
  comment even had the direction backwards). Fold the check into _spawn via a
  new replace_only= param: the identity test and the pop+replace now share ONE
  lock, so the respawn is a true no-op when superseded/culled.

- Honest states (low): the superseded branch returned current_session(key),
  which is None when the key was cap-culled during our out-of-lock wait; the
  route turns None into a dishonest 'Media file not found on disk' 404 for a
  file that exists. Yield 'current_session(key) or s' so a culled session
  degrades to the route's retryable 'not available yet' path instead.

- Hygiene: _want_hw docstring corrected (it is a test-only shim now; production
  decides via _select_encode) and the two stale _want_hw references refreshed
  (stream.py header, config.py plex_transcode_hw).

- tests: the cap-cull no-respawn/no-None sub-case; the _opencl_present except
  OSError branch (glob raising, not just empty); tightened a tautological -vf
  assertion. Backend gate green (ruff + full pytest).
2026-08-30 15:11:37 +02:00
..
2026-06-14 04:40:22 +02:00

Backend conventions

The rules below are already followed across backend/app — they lived only in a few module docstrings (demo.py, userscope.py, routes/_common.py) until this file collected them (E3 S3, B-core-20). When you add code, match these so the next reader doesn't have to guess "which pattern do I copy".

Module layering

Three layers, by who runs the code — not by feature:

  1. routes/… — request-only. A route module holds HTTP concerns: auth dependencies, request/ response models, status-code mapping, serialization. It owns logic that runs only on a request. Business logic that a request happens to trigger does not live here if anything else runs it too.

  2. plex/, downloads/, sync/ — domain logic shared by more than one caller. Anything the scheduler or the worker runs (not just a request) lives in one of these domain packages, so the route, the worker, and the scheduler share one definition. Examples from this codebase: downloads/service.py owns enqueue + the job state transitions (routes call it); plex/sync.py is run by both the admin route and the scheduler; downloads/pipeline.py is the worker's child pipeline.

  3. Flat app/*.py core modules — cross-cutting primitives. auth, sysconfig, quota, audit, notifications, userscope, realtime, ratelimit, progress, … are single-file primitives many layers import. They depend on nothing above them (a core module must never import a routes/… module).

Extraction trigger: the SECOND consumer. Keep new logic inline in its first caller. The moment a second caller needs it (a worker as well as a route; a scheduler as well as a route), extract it down a layer — into the relevant domain package, or a flat core module if it's cross-cutting. Don't pre-abstract for a single caller; don't leave shared logic duplicated once there are two.

Transaction ownership

This follows CLAUDE.md's canonical rule verbatim — "the handler/job-wrapper commits; helpers flush (only quota owns its session)" — so read it that way, not as an exception to it. The commit belongs to the operation owner; anything called inside another transaction only stages its change (db.add / flush) and lets the owner commit, so the whole operation is one transaction. audit.record() is the reference: it adds the audit row and the caller commits it together with the mutation it records, so an audit entry can never exist without its change (or vice-versa).

  • The operation owner is usually the route handler. A service.* operation the handler delegates a whole transition to (e.g. service.cancel) is that owner and commits its one transition — it isn't a mid-operation helper. A helper that owns its OWN short-lived session (the worker's jobdb writes, the same carve-out CLAUDE.md grants quota) commits that session. Everything else flushes.
  • SessionLocal is expire_on_commit=False: after a raw UPDATE + commit, an ORM object you already loaded is stale. Read the fresh value from the row (RETURNING, or a re-SELECT), not the ORM attribute — see service.decr_ref_count.

Shared counters and status: do it atomically at the DB

  • Never read-modify-write a shared counter in Python (x.count = x.count + 1). Concurrent sessions lose an update. Use a DB-atomic statement — col = col + 1, or greatest(col - 1, 0) with RETURNING so the caller branches on the post-value under the row lock (service.incr_ref_count / decr_ref_count).
  • Download job status is a JobStatus StrEnum (downloads/status.py), not bare strings. The HOLDING set defines which states hold a MediaAsset (so release accounting stays correct); STOPPED_BY_ROUTE is the route-initiated stop set. A worker child's terminal write goes through service.finalize_if_running (an atomic UPDATE … WHERE status='running') so a finishing child can't resurrect a job a route just stopped.

Config: one home per kind

  • app.config.settings — boot/env config (DB URL, download root, worker concurrency): read once at startup, not user-tunable at runtime.
  • sysconfig.SPECS — the runtime admin knobs (DB-override-or-default). A new admin-tunable value goes in SPECS; don't invent a fourth store. (state.py's maintenance_batch predates this and is slated to fold into sysconfig — do not add more like it.)

The gate

Everything below must be green before a change is done (run via siftlode check): ruff (backend) · tsc ×3 + eslint + prettier + knip (frontend) · vitest · pytest. The pytest lane runs in backend/docker-compose.test.yml — an ephemeral Postgres + the backend tree bind-mounted — so the DB-backed integration tests (the db fixture) actually run; SIFTLODE_TEST_ REQUIRE_DB=1 there turns a would-be silent skip into a hard failure. See docs/development.md.