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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, to_sexps};
40pub use inputs::{declarations, install_input_primitives, Declaration, InputError, Inputs};
41pub use pipeline::{
42    parse, parse_tree_with_depth, parse_with_depth, run, run_with_inputs, Run, RunError,
43};
44pub use stdlib::install_blue_stdlib;
45
46use tatara_lisp_eval::{install_full_stdlib_with, Interpreter};
47
48/// Build an interpreter with the complete blue runtime installed.
49///
50/// This is the *only* sanctioned way to obtain one. A caller that builds an
51/// `Interpreter` directly gets a partial runtime, and the failure shows up as
52/// an unbound symbol at the far end of a program.
53pub fn interpreter<H: 'static>(host: &mut H) -> Interpreter<H> {
54    let mut interp = Interpreter::new();
55    // The FULL substrate, not just `install_primitives`.
56    //
57    // blue called `install_primitives` + `install_lisp_stdlib_with` and got
58    // neither `install_hof` nor `install_map` — so `map`, `filter`, `fold` and
59    // every map literal were UNBOUND SYMBOLS. A language with no higher-order
60    // functions, in a workspace whose whole surface is Ruby's.
61    //
62    // Same shape as the stdlib gap this crate was created to fix: the substrate
63    // has layers, and naming them one at a time is how one gets missed. Call
64    // the composed installer.
65    install_full_stdlib_with(&mut interp, host);
66    // Layer 3: blue's own core — strings and number conversion, which
67    // tatara-lisp does not carry at all. See `stdlib` for why the
68    // character-counting semantics are blue's rather than the substrate's.
69    stdlib::install_blue_stdlib(&mut interp);
70    // Layer 4: blue's JSON surface — parse, stringify, read. Pure
71    // computation, no host imports, so it is installed unconditionally; the
72    // `wasm32-unknown-unknown` consumer keeps it. See `json` for why objects
73    // arrive as alists rather than Maps.
74    json::install_json_stdlib(&mut interp);
75    // Layer 5: the host-side system surface — process, filesystem, env,
76    // clock. Feature-gated: every sys primitive is a host import, so the
77    // wasm consumer (which builds with `sys` OFF) keeps its zero-host-import
78    // surface by construction. Only the CLI turns it on.
79    #[cfg(feature = "sys")]
80    sys::install_sys_stdlib(&mut interp);
81    interp
82}
83
84/// The prebuilt hostless substrate, built once per process.
85///
86/// **Measured 2026-08-01, and this is the entire reason the fork exists.**
87/// Profiling a trivial blue program found the run dominated by ONE thing:
88///
89/// ```text
90/// parse                     9.6 µs
91/// check                     1.6 µs
92/// interpreter_hostless()  5 820 µs   <- 98.4% of the run
93/// ```
94///
95/// Splitting that further: `Interpreter::new()` is 24 µs and
96/// `install_full_stdlib_with` is the rest — the stdlib was being rebuilt from
97/// scratch on every single `run()`, and blue's whole surface (`map`, `filter`,
98/// string ops) lives in it, so no program could avoid the cost.
99///
100/// `fork` already existed upstream for exactly this, and blue simply was not
101/// using it. tatara-lisp-eval's own `fork_cost.rs` opens with *"cheapness is
102/// the entire reason it exists"* — the capability was built, documented and
103/// guarded, and the consumer kept paying full price beside it.
104///
105/// | | per call |
106/// |---|---|
107/// | rebuild (`Interpreter::new` + `install_full_stdlib_with`) | **9.03 ms** |
108/// | `fork()` of a prebuilt base | **0.102 ms** |
109///
110/// **88× on the dominant cost.** This is purgatory's computation-layer clause
111/// made real: the stdlib is the most-reused computation in the language, and
112/// it was being discarded and recomputed rather than resurrected.
113///
114/// Isolation is `fork`'s contract, not an assumption made here — its
115/// correctness gates live upstream in `fork.rs`, and `fork_cost.rs` guards
116/// against a future change that deep-copies (which would keep every
117/// correctness test green while silently restoring the cost this removes).
118static HOSTLESS_BASE: std::sync::LazyLock<std::sync::Mutex<Interpreter<()>>> =
119    std::sync::LazyLock::new(|| std::sync::Mutex::new(interpreter(&mut ())));
120
121/// The common host-free case.
122///
123/// Forks the process-wide base rather than rebuilding the stdlib. Falls back to
124/// a full build if the lock is poisoned: a poisoned lock means another thread
125/// panicked mid-fork, and answering a correct-but-slow interpreter beats
126/// propagating someone else's panic into an unrelated caller.
127pub fn interpreter_hostless() -> Interpreter<()> {
128    match HOSTLESS_BASE.lock() {
129        Ok(base) => base.fork(),
130        Err(_) => interpreter(&mut ()),
131    }
132}
133
134/// Lift spanless forms into what the evaluator eats.
135///
136/// **No longer on the `blue run` path, and that is the point.**
137/// [`erase::erase_types`] now takes and returns `Spanned`, so
138/// `pipeline::run_in_surface` hands the evaluator the *parser's own* tree with
139/// the author's positions on it — there is nothing left to lift. This
140/// function survives for a caller that genuinely holds spanless `Sexp` and
141/// has no position to preserve, and as the subject of the two tests below
142/// that pin why the hop it replaced was unsafe.
143///
144/// `Interpreter::eval_program` takes `&[Spanned]`; blue's stages produced
145/// `Sexp`. Two callers bridged that gap by *printing the tree and reading it
146/// back* — `forms.map(ToString::to_string).join("\n")` into
147/// `tatara_lisp::read_spanned`. Both stopped, and the round trip is gone from
148/// the pipeline.
149///
150/// **Why it had to go.** Printing a tree we already hold and re-parsing it puts
151/// the reader's lexer between blue and its own output, for nothing — and the
152/// printer and the reader are **not inverses**. `Atom::Str`'s `Display` escapes
153/// its payload and its own docs explain at length why; the `Atom::Symbol` arm
154/// is a bare `write_str`. So a symbol whose text carries a separator prints as
155/// several tokens and reads back as several symbols: a well-formed tree with a
156/// different meaning, no error raised. Measured 2026-08-02 —
157/// `pipeline::tests::the_round_trip_is_not_the_identity_in_general` pins which
158/// separators are silent and which are loud. The only thing that kept this from
159/// biting was blue happening not to emit those bytes. A stage that never
160/// serialises cannot be mis-read.
161///
162/// **What is given up: spans.** The old path's spans pointed into the
163/// re-printed lisp text, a buffer no human ever wrote and no diagnostic could
164/// usefully cite — they were positions in blue's own output, not in the
165/// author's source. `Span::synthetic` says the same thing honestly.
166///
167/// **Carrying real blue-source spans through erasure was the separate piece of
168/// work, and it is done — but NOT the way this doc predicted.** It said the
169/// work "would start from `Spanned::from_sexp_at`". It did not, and could not:
170/// `from_sexp_at` is a *lift*, stamping ONE span across a whole subtree, so
171/// starting there would have replaced a tree of synthetic spans with a tree of
172/// identical wrong ones. The actual shape was to stop projecting in the first
173/// place — erasure walks `Spanned` and keeps each node's own span, because it
174/// only ever deletes (see [`erase`]). **A pointer at the nearest-looking API is
175/// how a reader is sent to the wrong starting point**; the note is corrected
176/// here rather than deleted, because the wrong lead was load-bearing enough to
177/// be worth naming.
178#[must_use]
179pub fn lower_to_spanned(forms: &[tatara_lisp::Sexp]) -> Vec<tatara_lisp::Spanned> {
180    forms
181        .iter()
182        .map(tatara_lisp::Spanned::from_sexp_synthetic)
183        .collect()
184}
185
186#[cfg(test)]
187mod tests {
188    use super::*;
189    use tatara_lisp_eval::Value;
190
191    fn eval(src: &str) -> Value {
192        let forms = tatara_lisp::read_spanned(src).expect("read");
193        let mut interp = interpreter_hostless();
194        interp.eval_program(&forms, &mut ()).expect("eval")
195    }
196
197    /// Every layer is present. A test that only checked layer 1 is exactly
198    /// what let the stdlib gap survive.
199    #[test]
200    fn both_layers_are_installed() {
201        // Layer 1: a Rust primitive.
202        assert!(matches!(eval("(+ 1 2)"), Value::Int(3)));
203        // Layer 2: a stdlib definition, which is the layer that was missing.
204        assert!(matches!(eval("(mod 7 3)"), Value::Int(1)));
205        assert!(matches!(eval("(inc 41)"), Value::Int(42)));
206        assert!(matches!(eval("(first (list 9 8))"), Value::Int(9)));
207        // Layer 3: blue's own core — string and number conversion.
208        assert!(matches!(eval(r#"(length "héllo")"#), Value::Int(5)));
209        // Layer 4: the JSON surface.
210        assert!(matches!(
211            eval(r#"(json_parse "{\"outcome\":\"ok\"}")"#),
212            Value::List(_)
213        ));
214    }
215
216    /// Anti-vacuity: a bare interpreter really does LACK layer 2, so the test
217    /// above is measuring the runtime's contribution and not a property the
218    /// interpreter has for free.
219    #[test]
220    fn a_bare_interpreter_lacks_the_stdlib() {
221        let forms = tatara_lisp::read_spanned("(mod 7 3)").expect("read");
222        let mut bare = Interpreter::new();
223        tatara_lisp_eval::install_primitives(&mut bare);
224        assert!(
225            bare.eval_program(&forms, &mut ()).is_err(),
226            "if a bare interpreter already resolved `mod`, this crate would be measuring nothing"
227        );
228    }
229}