Proposal for consolidated output

[sakrejda]

@Bob_Carpenter

I’m going to expand this thread a bit to generalize the idea to consolidated inputs across the board. We can move this to a separate issue if others don’t think this is appropriate here. I don’t think it’ll open a can of worms, as I think the high-level path forward is pretty clear on this.

Putting on the forum moderator hat for a sec.:

1. The writers/loggers/interrupts are different because the interfaces have to specify a whole set of behaviors when building a “relay” for the loggers whereas for most other items the interface just supplies a few int/double values.
2. I agree the high-level discussion of the builder pattern is on-topic here, we should share a builder pattern.
3. Detailed discussion about which args belong in which bundle should be in its own thread or (ideally) a design doc on the Wiki
4. var_context also brings up a host of unrelated issues (including performance IIRC) and belongs in the var_context thread: Var_context, what do we want from it?

• Removed the slightly derogatory ‘bike-shedding’, I didn’t mean it like that.