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