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blue_lang_runtime/
lib.rs

1//! The blue runtime — **one** definition of what a blue program runs against.
2//!
3//! Before this crate existed, every consumer hand-rolled its own
4//! `Interpreter::new()` + `install_primitives(...)` pair — three of them, in
5//! three crates — and they had silently drifted: none of them loaded the Lisp
6//! stdlib. So `6 % 3` lowered correctly to `(mod 6 3)`, `mod` was genuinely
7//! defined, and the program still died with `unbound symbol: mod`, because
8//! the definition lived in a stdlib nobody loaded.
9//!
10//! That is the duplication tax in its usual shape: the bug is not in any one
11//! copy, it is in there *being* copies. One function now owns the answer.
12//!
13//! ## Layers
14//!
15//! A blue interpreter is built in two layers, and both are required:
16//!
17//! 1. **Rust primitives** — arithmetic, comparison, list ops, I/O.
18//! 2. **The full tatara stdlib** — primitives, higher-order functions
19//!    (`map`/`filter`/`fold`), maps, channels, fibers, type-check, and
20//!    everything tatara defines in tatara-lisp itself
21//!    (`mod`, `rem`, `first`, `inc`, `even?`, the actor and transducer
22//!    helpers, …). Loading it is not optional garnish: blue's own operator
23//!    lowering depends on it.
24//! 3. **blue's own core** ([`stdlib`]) — strings and number conversion, which
25//!    tatara-lisp does not have in any form. A Ruby-surface language without
26//!    `length` or `upcase` is not usable, and the semantics are Ruby's
27//!    (characters, not bytes), which is why they are blue's and not the
28//!    substrate's.
29//! 4. **JSON** ([`json`]) and **cryptography** ([`crypto`]) — pure
30//!    computation, installed unconditionally, so the wasm consumer keeps them.
31//! 5. **The host layer** (`sys`, behind the `sys` feature) — every name in it
32//!    is a host import.
33//! 6. **Processes** ([`attach_node`]) — `spawn`, `send`, `receive` and the
34//!    rest of `blue_lang_proc::node`'s words, bound to a node of the
35//!    interpreter's own, so the program is that node's root process.
36
37pub mod alloc;
38pub mod collection;
39pub mod crypto;
40pub mod dispatch;
41pub mod doc_sources;
42pub mod docs;
43pub mod domain;
44#[cfg(feature = "sys")]
45pub mod entropy;
46pub mod erase;
47pub mod errors;
48pub mod host_surface;
49pub mod hosted;
50pub mod inputs;
51pub mod json;
52pub mod literal;
53pub mod messages;
54#[cfg(feature = "sys")]
55pub mod net;
56pub mod nix;
57pub mod observe;
58pub mod paths;
59pub mod pipeline;
60pub mod project_rules;
61pub mod session;
62pub mod spread;
63pub mod stdlib;
64#[cfg(feature = "sys")]
65pub mod sys;
66pub mod timings;
67pub mod uses;
68
69pub use erase::{erase_types, to_sexps};
70pub use inputs::{declarations, install_input_primitives, Declaration, InputError, Inputs};
71pub use pipeline::{
72    parse, parse_tree_with_depth, parse_with_depth, run, run_with_inputs, Run, RunError,
73};
74pub use stdlib::install_blue_stdlib;
75
76use tatara_lisp_eval::{install_full_stdlib_with, Interpreter};
77
78/// Build an interpreter with the complete blue runtime installed.
79///
80/// This is the *only* sanctioned way to obtain one. A caller that builds an
81/// `Interpreter` directly gets a partial runtime, and the failure shows up as
82/// an unbound symbol at the far end of a program.
83pub fn interpreter<H: 'static>(host: &mut H) -> Interpreter<H> {
84    let mut interp = Interpreter::new();
85    // The FULL substrate, not just `install_primitives`.
86    //
87    // blue called `install_primitives` + `install_lisp_stdlib_with` and got
88    // neither `install_hof` nor `install_map` — so `map`, `filter`, `fold` and
89    // every map literal were UNBOUND SYMBOLS. A language with no higher-order
90    // functions, in a workspace whose whole surface is Ruby's.
91    //
92    // Same shape as the stdlib gap this crate was created to fix: the substrate
93    // has layers, and naming them one at a time is how one gets missed. Call
94    // the composed installer.
95    install_full_stdlib_with(&mut interp, host);
96    // Layer 3: blue's own core — strings and number conversion, which
97    // tatara-lisp does not carry at all. See `stdlib` for why the
98    // character-counting semantics are blue's rather than the substrate's.
99    stdlib::install_blue_stdlib(&mut interp);
100    // Layer 4: blue's JSON surface — parse, stringify, read. Pure
101    // computation, no host imports, so it is installed unconditionally; the
102    // `wasm32-unknown-unknown` consumer keeps it. See `json` for why objects
103    // arrive as alists rather than Maps.
104    json::install_json_stdlib(&mut interp);
105    // Layer 4b: cryptography — BLAKE3 and Ed25519. Pure for the same reason
106    // JSON is: a deterministic function of its arguments, with the keypair's
107    // seed supplied by the caller rather than drawn from an entropy source,
108    // so it lowers to no import and the wasm consumer keeps it. See `crypto`.
109    crypto::install_crypto_stdlib(&mut interp);
110    nix::install_nix_stdlib(&mut interp);
111    // Layer 5: the host-side system surface — process, filesystem, env,
112    // clock, network. Feature-gated: every sys primitive is a host import, so the
113    // wasm consumer (which builds with `sys` OFF) keeps its zero-host-import
114    // surface by construction. Only the CLI turns it on.
115    #[cfg(feature = "sys")]
116    sys::install_sys_stdlib(&mut interp);
117    // Layer 6: processes. Bound here so every name oracle built from this
118    // interpreter (the check stage, the LSP, `blue reference`) knows them.
119    attach_node(&mut interp);
120    // Last, so installing the stdlib is not metered against the program.
121    apply_execution_bounds(&mut interp);
122    interp
123}
124
125/// Give `interp` a process node of its own: its program becomes the node's
126/// root, and `spawn` starts processes in this node and no other.
127///
128/// [`interpreter_hostless`] calls it on every fork, so two programs never
129/// share processes. A door that forks an interpreter per unit of work (a test
130/// per fork) calls it on each fork for the same reason.
131pub fn attach_node<H: 'static>(interp: &mut Interpreter<H>) {
132    dispatch::install(interp);
133    blue_lang_proc::install(interp, blue_lang_proc::Node::new(node_config()));
134}
135
136/// [`attach_node`] for a program that runs under `frame`: every process it
137/// starts is held to the same frame, so a host name the program may not call
138/// is refused in its children too. Without this a spawned child would run on
139/// the full runtime and a frame would be one `spawn` away from meaningless.
140pub fn attach_node_in_frame<H: 'static>(interp: &mut Interpreter<H>, frame: &blue_lang_waku::Waku) {
141    let mut config = node_config();
142    let refused = ungranted_host_names(frame);
143    config.child = std::sync::Arc::new(move || {
144        let mut child = child_interpreter();
145        refuse_host_names(&mut child, &refused, "this process's frame");
146        child
147    });
148    dispatch::install(interp);
149    blue_lang_proc::install(interp, blue_lang_proc::Node::new(config));
150}
151
152/// Every host name `frame` does not grant, with the label of its capability.
153#[must_use]
154pub fn ungranted_host_names(frame: &blue_lang_waku::Waku) -> Vec<(&'static str, &'static str)> {
155    blue_lang_waku::Capability::host_effects()
156        .into_iter()
157        .filter(|cap| !frame.reach.grants(*cap))
158        .flat_map(|cap| cap.names().into_iter().map(move |n| (n, cap.label())))
159        .collect()
160}
161
162/// Bind each of `refused` that `interp` defines to a refusal naming `who`.
163pub fn refuse_host_names<H: 'static>(
164    interp: &mut Interpreter<H>,
165    refused: &[(&'static str, &'static str)],
166    who: &'static str,
167) {
168    for &(name, label) in refused {
169        if interp.lookup_global(name).is_none() {
170            continue;
171        }
172        interp.register_fn(
173            name,
174            tatara_lisp_eval::ffi::Arity::Any,
175            move |_: &[tatara_lisp_eval::Value], _: &mut H, span| {
176                Err(tatara_lisp_eval::EvalError::native_fn(
177                    name,
178                    format!(
179                        "refused: `{name}` reaches the host ({label}), which {who} does not grant"
180                    ),
181                    span,
182                ))
183            },
184        );
185    }
186}
187
188/// The node every interpreter's processes run under: the execution bounds
189/// per incarnation, a scheduling quantum, and the host's clock when there is
190/// a host (a node with no host has a virtual clock: time passes only when
191/// every process waits).
192fn node_config() -> blue_lang_proc::NodeConfig {
193    let b = execution_bounds();
194    let mut config = blue_lang_proc::NodeConfig::new(std::sync::Arc::new(child_interpreter));
195    config.budget = tatara_lisp_eval::vm::Budget {
196        fuel: b.max_steps,
197        max_depth: Some(b.max_call_depth),
198        quantum: Some(blue_lang_proc::node::DEFAULT_QUANTUM),
199    };
200    config.clock = if cfg!(feature = "sys") {
201        blue_lang_proc::ClockKind::Real
202    } else {
203        blue_lang_proc::ClockKind::Virtual
204    };
205    config
206}
207
208/// A fresh interpreter for a child process: the hostless base, forked. The
209/// node adds its child words to it.
210fn child_interpreter() -> Interpreter<()> {
211    let mut interp = match HOSTLESS_BASE.lock() {
212        Ok(base) => base.fork(),
213        Err(_) => interpreter(&mut ()),
214    };
215    apply_execution_bounds(&mut interp);
216    interp
217}
218
219/// The execution bounds every interpreter this crate builds runs under.
220static EXECUTION_BOUNDS: std::sync::OnceLock<ExecutionBounds> = std::sync::OnceLock::new();
221
222/// How much a blue program may do before it is refused: nested calls and
223/// evaluation steps.
224///
225/// Both are BOUNDS in the sense `blue-lang-cli`'s `config` module admits: a
226/// terminating program under bounds above its cost returns the same value, and
227/// one that exceeds either is refused with a catchable `depth-exceeded` or
228/// `fuel-exhausted` error naming the limit and the function — never a process
229/// abort, which is what exceeding the host stack was before tatara-lisp-eval
230/// 0.3.63. The walker and the VM run under the same bounds and refuse with the
231/// same message.
232#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
233pub struct ExecutionBounds {
234    /// Nested (non-tail) calls alive at once. Tail calls do not count.
235    pub max_call_depth: usize,
236    /// Evaluation steps per run; `None` is unbounded.
237    pub max_steps: Option<usize>,
238}
239
240impl ExecutionBounds {
241    /// Depth at tatara-lisp-eval's `DEFAULT_MAX_DEPTH`, steps unbounded.
242    ///
243    /// The two defaults differ for one reason: whether a program that works
244    /// today keeps working. A recursion past 100k frames never worked — it
245    /// aborted the process — so bounding depth removes no behaviour. A run
246    /// longer than any finite step count did work (simulations, tools on
247    /// nodes), so a default step bound would remove it; for a few hours of
248    /// 2026-09-29 blue shipped 50M (~3 s) and did exactly that. A host that
249    /// runs code it did not write, or a test that must see a runaway end,
250    /// sets `max_steps` itself.
251    pub const DEFAULT: Self = Self {
252        max_call_depth: tatara_lisp_eval::vm::DEFAULT_MAX_DEPTH,
253        max_steps: None,
254    };
255}
256
257/// Name the bounds for this process. The CLI calls this once with the resolved
258/// `BlueConfig`, before any interpreter is built; an embedder that never calls
259/// it runs under [`ExecutionBounds::DEFAULT`]. Only the first call counts,
260/// like `sys::set_program_args`.
261pub fn set_execution_bounds(bounds: ExecutionBounds) {
262    let _ = EXECUTION_BOUNDS.set(bounds);
263}
264
265/// The bounds interpreters are built with.
266#[must_use]
267pub fn execution_bounds() -> ExecutionBounds {
268    EXECUTION_BOUNDS
269        .get()
270        .copied()
271        .unwrap_or(ExecutionBounds::DEFAULT)
272}
273
274fn apply_execution_bounds<H: 'static>(interp: &mut Interpreter<H>) {
275    let b = execution_bounds();
276    // No quantum, so the tree-walker refuses nothing of this budget.
277    let _ = interp.set_budget(tatara_lisp_eval::vm::Budget {
278        fuel: b.max_steps,
279        max_depth: Some(b.max_call_depth),
280        quantum: None,
281    });
282}
283
284/// The prebuilt hostless substrate, built once per process.
285///
286/// **Measured 2026-08-01, and this is the entire reason the fork exists.**
287/// Profiling a trivial blue program found the run dominated by ONE thing:
288///
289/// ```text
290/// parse                     9.6 µs
291/// check                     1.6 µs
292/// interpreter_hostless()  5 820 µs   <- 98.4% of the run
293/// ```
294///
295/// Splitting that further: `Interpreter::new()` is 24 µs and
296/// `install_full_stdlib_with` is the rest — the stdlib was being rebuilt from
297/// scratch on every single `run()`, and blue's whole surface (`map`, `filter`,
298/// string ops) lives in it, so no program could avoid the cost.
299///
300/// `fork` already existed upstream for exactly this, and blue simply was not
301/// using it. tatara-lisp-eval's own `fork_cost.rs` opens with *"cheapness is
302/// the entire reason it exists"* — the capability was built, documented and
303/// guarded, and the consumer kept paying full price beside it.
304///
305/// | | per call |
306/// |---|---|
307/// | rebuild (`Interpreter::new` + `install_full_stdlib_with`) | **9.03 ms** |
308/// | `fork()` of a prebuilt base | **0.102 ms** |
309///
310/// **88× on the dominant cost.** This is purgatory's computation-layer clause
311/// made real: the stdlib is the most-reused computation in the language, and
312/// it was being discarded and recomputed rather than resurrected.
313///
314/// Isolation is `fork`'s contract, not an assumption made here — its
315/// correctness gates live upstream in `fork.rs`, and `fork_cost.rs` guards
316/// against a future change that deep-copies (which would keep every
317/// correctness test green while silently restoring the cost this removes).
318static HOSTLESS_BASE: std::sync::LazyLock<std::sync::Mutex<Interpreter<()>>> =
319    std::sync::LazyLock::new(|| {
320        std::sync::Mutex::new(timings::stage(timings::Stage::Runtime, || {
321            interpreter(&mut ())
322        }))
323    });
324
325/// The common host-free case.
326///
327/// Forks the process-wide base rather than rebuilding the stdlib. Falls back to
328/// a full build if the lock is poisoned: a poisoned lock means another thread
329/// panicked mid-fork, and answering a correct-but-slow interpreter beats
330/// propagating someone else's panic into an unrelated caller.
331pub fn interpreter_hostless() -> Interpreter<()> {
332    let mut interp = match HOSTLESS_BASE.lock() {
333        Ok(base) => base.fork(),
334        Err(_) => interpreter(&mut ()),
335    };
336    // Again after the fork: the base may have been built before the bounds
337    // were named, and a fork inherits whatever its base had.
338    apply_execution_bounds(&mut interp);
339    // A node per fork: the base's own node would be shared by every program.
340    attach_node(&mut interp);
341    interp
342}
343
344/// Lift spanless forms into what the evaluator eats.
345///
346/// **No longer on the `blue run` path, and that is the point.**
347/// [`erase::erase_types`] now takes and returns `Spanned`, so
348/// `pipeline::run_in_surface` hands the evaluator the *parser's own* tree with
349/// the author's positions on it — there is nothing left to lift. This
350/// function survives for a caller that genuinely holds spanless `Sexp` and
351/// has no position to preserve, and as the subject of the two tests below
352/// that pin why the hop it replaced was unsafe.
353///
354/// `Interpreter::eval_program` takes `&[Spanned]`; blue's stages produced
355/// `Sexp`. Two callers bridged that gap by *printing the tree and reading it
356/// back* — `forms.map(ToString::to_string).join("\n")` into
357/// `tatara_lisp::read_spanned`. Both stopped, and the round trip is gone from
358/// the pipeline.
359///
360/// **Why it had to go.** Printing a tree we already hold and re-parsing it puts
361/// the reader's lexer between blue and its own output, for nothing — and the
362/// printer and the reader are **not inverses**. `Atom::Str`'s `Display` escapes
363/// its payload and its own docs explain at length why; the `Atom::Symbol` arm
364/// is a bare `write_str`. So a symbol whose text carries a separator prints as
365/// several tokens and reads back as several symbols: a well-formed tree with a
366/// different meaning, no error raised. Measured 2026-08-02 —
367/// `pipeline::tests::the_round_trip_is_not_the_identity_in_general` pins which
368/// separators are silent and which are loud. The only thing that kept this from
369/// biting was blue happening not to emit those bytes. A stage that never
370/// serialises cannot be mis-read.
371///
372/// **What is given up: spans.** The old path's spans pointed into the
373/// re-printed lisp text, a buffer no human ever wrote and no diagnostic could
374/// usefully cite — they were positions in blue's own output, not in the
375/// author's source. `Span::synthetic` says the same thing honestly.
376///
377/// **Carrying real blue-source spans through erasure was the separate piece of
378/// work, and it is done — but NOT the way this doc predicted.** It said the
379/// work "would start from `Spanned::from_sexp_at`". It did not, and could not:
380/// `from_sexp_at` is a *lift*, stamping ONE span across a whole subtree, so
381/// starting there would have replaced a tree of synthetic spans with a tree of
382/// identical wrong ones. The actual shape was to stop projecting in the first
383/// place — erasure walks `Spanned` and keeps each node's own span, because it
384/// only ever deletes (see [`erase`]). **A pointer at the nearest-looking API is
385/// how a reader is sent to the wrong starting point**; the note is corrected
386/// here rather than deleted, because the wrong lead was load-bearing enough to
387/// be worth naming.
388#[must_use]
389pub fn lower_to_spanned(forms: &[tatara_lisp::Sexp]) -> Vec<tatara_lisp::Spanned> {
390    forms
391        .iter()
392        .map(tatara_lisp::Spanned::from_sexp_synthetic)
393        .collect()
394}
395
396#[cfg(test)]
397mod tests {
398    use super::*;
399    use tatara_lisp_eval::Value;
400
401    fn eval(src: &str) -> Value {
402        let forms = tatara_lisp::read_spanned(src).expect("read");
403        let mut interp = interpreter_hostless();
404        interp.eval_program(&forms, &mut ()).expect("eval")
405    }
406
407    /// Every layer is present. A test that only checked layer 1 is exactly
408    /// what let the stdlib gap survive.
409    #[test]
410    fn both_layers_are_installed() {
411        // Layer 1: a Rust primitive.
412        assert!(matches!(eval("(+ 1 2)"), Value::Int(3)));
413        // Layer 2: a stdlib definition, which is the layer that was missing.
414        assert!(matches!(eval("(mod 7 3)"), Value::Int(1)));
415        assert!(matches!(eval("(inc 41)"), Value::Int(42)));
416        assert!(matches!(eval("(first (list 9 8))"), Value::Int(9)));
417        // Layer 3: blue's own core — string and number conversion.
418        assert!(matches!(eval(r#"(length "héllo")"#), Value::Int(5)));
419        // Layer 4: the JSON surface.
420        assert!(matches!(
421            eval(r#"(json_parse "{\"outcome\":\"ok\"}")"#),
422            Value::List(_)
423        ));
424        // Layer 4b: cryptography.
425        assert!(matches!(eval(r#"(blake3_hex "")"#), Value::Str(_)));
426    }
427
428    /// Anti-vacuity: a bare interpreter really does LACK layer 2, so the test
429    /// above is measuring the runtime's contribution and not a property the
430    /// interpreter has for free.
431    #[test]
432    fn a_bare_interpreter_lacks_the_stdlib() {
433        let forms = tatara_lisp::read_spanned("(mod 7 3)").expect("read");
434        let mut bare = Interpreter::new();
435        tatara_lisp_eval::install_primitives(&mut bare);
436        assert!(
437            bare.eval_program(&forms, &mut ()).is_err(),
438            "if a bare interpreter already resolved `mod`, this crate would be measuring nothing"
439        );
440    }
441}