[mononcqc]

Heart does solve it in a way, yes. Any Master/Slave pattern where a masterless slave becomes a master also solves it. The complex cases I had in mind happen when you dynamically add more workers and try to set up crazier links (A is the master of B, B is the master of C, C is the master of A), although there are few practical uses of that. You'd have to try to shoot yourself in the foot I guess. I see it as a bit hard to provide a generic OTP pattern to do that kind of thing past the standard takeover/failover setup (and heart for VMs)