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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
30pub mod erase;
31pub mod inputs;
32pub mod json;
33pub mod pipeline;
34pub mod stdlib;
35#[cfg(feature = "sys")]
36pub mod sys;
37pub mod uses;
38
39pub use erase::erase_types;
40pub use inputs::{declarations, install_input_primitives, Declaration, InputError, Inputs};
41pub use pipeline::{parse, parse_with_depth, run, run_with_inputs, Run, RunError};
42pub use stdlib::install_blue_stdlib;
43
44use tatara_lisp_eval::{install_full_stdlib_with, Interpreter};
45
46/// Build an interpreter with the complete blue runtime installed.
47///
48/// This is the *only* sanctioned way to obtain one. A caller that builds an
49/// `Interpreter` directly gets a partial runtime, and the failure shows up as
50/// an unbound symbol at the far end of a program.
51pub fn interpreter<H: 'static>(host: &mut H) -> Interpreter<H> {
52    let mut interp = Interpreter::new();
53    // The FULL substrate, not just `install_primitives`.
54    //
55    // blue called `install_primitives` + `install_lisp_stdlib_with` and got
56    // neither `install_hof` nor `install_map` — so `map`, `filter`, `fold` and
57    // every map literal were UNBOUND SYMBOLS. A language with no higher-order
58    // functions, in a workspace whose whole surface is Ruby's.
59    //
60    // Same shape as the stdlib gap this crate was created to fix: the substrate
61    // has layers, and naming them one at a time is how one gets missed. Call
62    // the composed installer.
63    install_full_stdlib_with(&mut interp, host);
64    // Layer 3: blue's own core — strings and number conversion, which
65    // tatara-lisp does not carry at all. See `stdlib` for why the
66    // character-counting semantics are blue's rather than the substrate's.
67    stdlib::install_blue_stdlib(&mut interp);
68    // Layer 4: blue's JSON surface — parse, stringify, read. Pure
69    // computation, no host imports, so it is installed unconditionally; the
70    // `wasm32-unknown-unknown` consumer keeps it. See `json` for why objects
71    // arrive as alists rather than Maps.
72    json::install_json_stdlib(&mut interp);
73    // Layer 5: the host-side system surface — process, filesystem, env,
74    // clock. Feature-gated: every sys primitive is a host import, so the
75    // wasm consumer (which builds with `sys` OFF) keeps its zero-host-import
76    // surface by construction. Only the CLI turns it on.
77    #[cfg(feature = "sys")]
78    sys::install_sys_stdlib(&mut interp);
79    interp
80}
81
82/// The prebuilt hostless substrate, built once per process.
83///
84/// **Measured 2026-08-01, and this is the entire reason the fork exists.**
85/// Profiling a trivial blue program found the run dominated by ONE thing:
86///
87/// ```text
88/// parse                     9.6 µs
89/// check                     1.6 µs
90/// interpreter_hostless()  5 820 µs   <- 98.4% of the run
91/// ```
92///
93/// Splitting that further: `Interpreter::new()` is 24 µs and
94/// `install_full_stdlib_with` is the rest — the stdlib was being rebuilt from
95/// scratch on every single `run()`, and blue's whole surface (`map`, `filter`,
96/// string ops) lives in it, so no program could avoid the cost.
97///
98/// `fork` already existed upstream for exactly this, and blue simply was not
99/// using it. tatara-lisp-eval's own `fork_cost.rs` opens with *"cheapness is
100/// the entire reason it exists"* — the capability was built, documented and
101/// guarded, and the consumer kept paying full price beside it.
102///
103/// | | per call |
104/// |---|---|
105/// | rebuild (`Interpreter::new` + `install_full_stdlib_with`) | **9.03 ms** |
106/// | `fork()` of a prebuilt base | **0.102 ms** |
107///
108/// **88× on the dominant cost.** This is purgatory's computation-layer clause
109/// made real: the stdlib is the most-reused computation in the language, and
110/// it was being discarded and recomputed rather than resurrected.
111///
112/// Isolation is `fork`'s contract, not an assumption made here — its
113/// correctness gates live upstream in `fork.rs`, and `fork_cost.rs` guards
114/// against a future change that deep-copies (which would keep every
115/// correctness test green while silently restoring the cost this removes).
116static HOSTLESS_BASE: std::sync::LazyLock<std::sync::Mutex<Interpreter<()>>> =
117    std::sync::LazyLock::new(|| std::sync::Mutex::new(interpreter(&mut ())));
118
119/// The common host-free case.
120///
121/// Forks the process-wide base rather than rebuilding the stdlib. Falls back to
122/// a full build if the lock is poisoned: a poisoned lock means another thread
123/// panicked mid-fork, and answering a correct-but-slow interpreter beats
124/// propagating someone else's panic into an unrelated caller.
125pub fn interpreter_hostless() -> Interpreter<()> {
126    match HOSTLESS_BASE.lock() {
127        Ok(base) => base.fork(),
128        Err(_) => interpreter(&mut ()),
129    }
130}
131
132/// Lift blue's emitted forms into what the evaluator eats. **The one door.**
133///
134/// `Interpreter::eval_program` takes `&[Spanned]`; blue's stages produce
135/// `Sexp`. Two callers bridged that gap by *printing the tree and reading it
136/// back* — `forms.map(ToString::to_string).join("\n")` into
137/// `tatara_lisp::read_spanned`. Both now call this instead, and the round trip
138/// is gone.
139///
140/// **Why it had to go.** Printing a tree we already hold and re-parsing it puts
141/// the reader's lexer between blue and its own output, for nothing — and the
142/// printer and the reader are **not inverses**. `Atom::Str`'s `Display` escapes
143/// its payload and its own docs explain at length why; the `Atom::Symbol` arm
144/// is a bare `write_str`. So a symbol whose text carries a separator prints as
145/// several tokens and reads back as several symbols: a well-formed tree with a
146/// different meaning, no error raised. Measured 2026-08-02 —
147/// `pipeline::tests::the_round_trip_is_not_the_identity_in_general` pins which
148/// separators are silent and which are loud. The only thing that kept this from
149/// biting was blue happening not to emit those bytes. A stage that never
150/// serialises cannot be mis-read.
151///
152/// **What is given up: spans.** The old path's spans pointed into the
153/// re-printed lisp text, a buffer no human ever wrote and no diagnostic could
154/// usefully cite — they were positions in blue's own output, not in the
155/// author's source. `Span::synthetic` says the same thing honestly. Carrying
156/// real blue-source spans through erasure is a separate piece of work and
157/// would start from `Spanned::from_sexp_at`, not from a printer.
158#[must_use]
159pub fn lower_to_spanned(forms: &[tatara_lisp::Sexp]) -> Vec<tatara_lisp::Spanned> {
160    forms
161        .iter()
162        .map(tatara_lisp::Spanned::from_sexp_synthetic)
163        .collect()
164}
165
166#[cfg(test)]
167mod tests {
168    use super::*;
169    use tatara_lisp_eval::Value;
170
171    fn eval(src: &str) -> Value {
172        let forms = tatara_lisp::read_spanned(src).expect("read");
173        let mut interp = interpreter_hostless();
174        interp.eval_program(&forms, &mut ()).expect("eval")
175    }
176
177    /// Every layer is present. A test that only checked layer 1 is exactly
178    /// what let the stdlib gap survive.
179    #[test]
180    fn both_layers_are_installed() {
181        // Layer 1: a Rust primitive.
182        assert!(matches!(eval("(+ 1 2)"), Value::Int(3)));
183        // Layer 2: a stdlib definition, which is the layer that was missing.
184        assert!(matches!(eval("(mod 7 3)"), Value::Int(1)));
185        assert!(matches!(eval("(inc 41)"), Value::Int(42)));
186        assert!(matches!(eval("(first (list 9 8))"), Value::Int(9)));
187        // Layer 3: blue's own core — string and number conversion.
188        assert!(matches!(eval(r#"(length "héllo")"#), Value::Int(5)));
189        // Layer 4: the JSON surface.
190        assert!(matches!(
191            eval(r#"(json_parse "{\"outcome\":\"ok\"}")"#),
192            Value::List(_)
193        ));
194    }
195
196    /// Anti-vacuity: a bare interpreter really does LACK layer 2, so the test
197    /// above is measuring the runtime's contribution and not a property the
198    /// interpreter has for free.
199    #[test]
200    fn a_bare_interpreter_lacks_the_stdlib() {
201        let forms = tatara_lisp::read_spanned("(mod 7 3)").expect("read");
202        let mut bare = Interpreter::new();
203        tatara_lisp_eval::install_primitives(&mut bare);
204        assert!(
205            bare.eval_program(&forms, &mut ()).is_err(),
206            "if a bare interpreter already resolved `mod`, this crate would be measuring nothing"
207        );
208    }
209}