Comment 19 for bug 1778591

I was doing a review of bugs, and stumbled on this one as being old and sort of undecided.

I suspect a lot of the confusion we're experiencing on issues like this can be cleared up if we're able to write up a few things and thereby identify some of inconsistencies between what we want and what we've got:

* What's a "consumer"?
* Why does that, whatever it is, need to show up in placement itself?
* What is the lifetime or lifecycle of that thing?

I think this is important because my brain (bless it's broken little heart) is still struggling to comprehend consumers as something relevant in placement itself. To me, there are allocations associated with an _external_ thing, by uuid, which have a lifecycle directly tied to the existence of that external thing. For the duration of the lump of allocations there is a known project and user associated.

If we are reifying the concept of "consumer" in placement it is presumably something different from "the lump of allocations". What is it? What is it for?

If we can get that written up in an email or spec or something I'll likely stop coming to a confused halt every time I cross this topic. My apparent resistance isn't simply "let's not have more things" it also (and more) "I don't know what this thing is."