On Oct 13, 3:13 ¨Âí¬ Òïâåòô Ëìåííå ¼óèïòôãõô®®®Àçïïçìåíáéì®ãïí¾ ÷òïôåº > > Concluding from the complexity you attribute to the problem I assume > you can provide more of those guiding questions. ¨Âîã÷å èáöå ãïííïî > understanding what the problem is we can start to think about > solutions. > sorry i missed your post. i think my guidelines are probably summarized most accurately here: http://rubyquiz.com/quiz67.html and here http://github.com/ahoward/fattr specifically the README and tests the really relevant bit is that this module M inhertiable_attribute :x end class C extend M end needs to do something sane. i also feel that any copying from the parent (aka inheriting state) should be deferred untill the value is actually referenced, otherwise very surprising things happen. cheers.