Yeah that’s the tradeoff of using RPC calls, if you need to use the remote modules heavily it’s a bit awkward.

I can imagine some helper would make it feel more readable, here’s a quick example:

defmodule DistUtils do
  def connect_remote(node, cookie) do
    Node.set_cookie(node, cookie)
    Node.connect(node)
    :persistent_term.put(:remote_node, node)
  end

  defmacro remotely!(fun) do
    quote bind_quoted: [fun: fun] do
      node = :persistent_term.get(:remote_node)

      myself = self()
      ref = make_ref()

      {pid, monitor_ref} =
        Node.spawn_monitor(node, fn ->
          result = fun.()
          send(myself, {:result, ref, result})
        end)

      receive do
        {:result, ^ref, result} ->
          result

        {:DOWN, ^monitor_ref, :process, ^pid, reason} ->
          raise "failed with reason: #{inspect(reason)}"
      end
    end
  end
end

Then connect with

require DistUtils

DistUtils.connect_remote(node, cookie)

and run code on the remote node:

DistUtils.remotely!(fn ->
  Foo |> Repo.aggregate(:count)
end)

(@josevalim if that solution is not sane let me know, or if you have any other ideas : D)