Sometimes there are valid reasons that part of a R...

# coroutines

[darkmoon_uk]

Sometimes there are valid reasons that part of a Reactive System (Flow setup) forms a circular reference.
In these cases, it's impossible to declare all parts of an overall Flow linearly; at some point we need to reference a part that hasn't been declared yet.
In RxJava the idiomatic way to work around this was using Relay - a specialised Subject.
Is there a Flow equivalent?
It seems that a MutableSharedFlow with replay = 0 will have the right semantics.

[elizarov]

Depends on the number of subscriptions. SharedFlow is designed for multiple subscribers and loses items when there are no subscriptions. If you need guaranteed delivery and expect that a single subscriber comes at a later point in time, then Channel is a better solution.

[darkmoon_uk]

Thanks @elizarov . I see that Channel can be a better choice; guaranteed delivery and no sharing mechanism which may be extraneous if we're looking to merely join a 'loop' (at least with consumeAsFlow()).