The trio the author decided on 2026-09-20 is now all built: def is CL's
defparameter — its initialiser runs on every daemon re-run, unguarded, so
an edited initialiser repaints the same storage on C-c C-c plus re-run —
defonce (Clojure's name for CL's defvar, per the author) initialises once
behind the .init~once. flag, and defconst stays the image.
One parse arm reads both forms; the difference is Ast.reinit, carried to
Tast.global's grerun. Emit.startup_plan gives a def no guard flag, and
Check.check_global lifts every def initialiser — zero and literal
included — into global/<n>, so the host's startup reaches it through the
function cell and a re-evaluated def swaps it (Session's def_inits;
Emit.redefinition declares the cell for a non-sibling target). The old
defvar spelling is refused with the rename and both compiling spellings,
and every program, test, doc and editor list is swept — except sand.flan,
the author's live WIP, whose seven defvar lines are flagged in FIX.org
and keep its three dependent tests red on this branch.
A constructor in the agent package binds FLAN_AGENT_SOCKET when it is set,
which is the daemon and nothing else — both shapes set it, before the fork in
--two-process and before the exec in the merged build. So a program under
[flan dev] that calls (agent/poll) and has no (agent/start) in it takes
redefinitions anyway, and one that does call start meets an agent that is
already listening and gets a no-op.
The window this closes was the complaint in DISCUSS.org: a program that opens
a window before starting its agent leaves the daemon waiting on a socket that
does not exist yet. Bound here, the socket exists before main whatever the
program does afterwards — so test_dev.ml's late-agent row asserts the negation
of what it used to. The delivery sent during the sleep no longer carries "the
program has not called (agent/start ...) yet", because that is no longer true
of it; what is still late, and still asserted, is the poll that installs it.
It reaches exactly as far as the linker does. Reach prunes a package nothing
calls into, so a program that mentions the agent nowhere does not link this
file and has no constructor to run: auto-start is for a program that polls and
has dropped its start call, not for one that says nothing about the agent at
all. That limit and the release-build residual are in FIX.org, along with the
daemon branch that can no longer be reached.
agent-nostart.flan is the pin, and its two numbers are the honest ones: 1
before anything could arrive, 1000 after the wait, because a listener bound
before main is still not an install.
[merged_serve] waited up to ten seconds for the program to bind agent.sock
before it started [accept_loop]. The listening socket was already up, so an
editor connected fine and then heard nothing: every first request of every
session cost the whole wait when the program calls (agent/start ...) late —
sand.flan starts it after rl/init-window returns — or never.
Nothing the editor asks needs that socket. In one process a delivery is a
call into flan_agent.c, not a connect, and the two-process daemon has already
waited for the bind in [two_process] and fails if it never comes. What the
wait was for is the sentence a program with no agent deserves, and a sentence
does not have to be in front of the loop to be said. So it is a deadline the
session passes ([agent_check]) rather than a wait it does: read from the
accept loop between connections and from [serve] before each request, because
an editor holds one connection for a whole session and the loop is not
cycling while it is attached. No thread, for the reason lib/dune gives about
what the merged link does to this library's dependencies.
Delivery stays honest either way. A program that links no agent at all
refuses through [over_socket]'s ENOENT, as before. One that has the agent but
has not started it takes the module into the ring and is answered with a note
that promises the poll and not a frame: a program with no (agent/poll) in it
never installs this, and "at its next frame boundary" would be the reply that
makes a redefinition look applied when it is not. C-x C-e's five-second
timeout gets the same distinction instead of asking whether a program that
has not got to its loop yet is calling the poll in it.
And the note a parked program's delivery carries is now said once per park.
A finished program is parked, so re-evaluating while a run's output is on the
screen repeated a paragraph on every C-c C-c. The first delivery of each park
explains itself; the rest say the one line that is the claim. [rerun] clears
the flag as well as [eval] does, so a new park is a new reader.
