I’m fighting against a mess of compile dependencies.

One issue is that many things have a runtime dependency on the router (ok) and that the router has multiple compile-time dependencies on views and layouts (not ok).

I notice that changing the modules of these views to Module.concat solves the problem:

  # router.ex

  # introduces a compile-time dependency
  pipeline :example do
    plug(:put_layout, {MyApp.LayoutView, :example})
  end
  # no dependency
  pipeline :example do
    plug(:put_layout, {Module.concat(:MyApp, :LayoutView), :example})
  end

1. Is this expected / am I missing something?

2. Before I write a macro to do this, is there a better way to resolve this?

This kind of issue does not seem unique.

I was naively thinking that this pattern was pretty natural and would be handled properly, either by put_layout accepting a string for the module name, or by plug being a smart macro that could avoid the compile-time dependency altogether, or by pipelines being in a different files from routes for example.