All three want the same three facts about a name — what it is, what it looks
like, and where it was written — so the daemon answers all three in one
`defs` reply and the client keeps the last one.
`defs` is its own op rather than more fields on `describe`. `describe` is what
an editor *polls*: it is how the program's output gets drained, and the
existing tests ask it in loops. Signatures riding on that would be paid for
every time anyone glanced at the output buffer. This is asked once on connect
and again after each accepted install, which is exactly when the answer can
have changed — so a `defn` typed a second ago completes.
It is a cache rather than a request per keystroke because of where these are
called from: eldoc fires on an idle timer and completion inside redisplay, and
neither may block on a socket or signal.
Three refusals rather than three guesses. A global has no location because
`Tast.global` carries no `Loc`, and searching the buffer for "(defvar ticks"
instead would find the wrong one in a program of several files. The prelude is
a string inside the compiler, so its location names a file nobody can visit. A
short name that could be several of the program's package-qualified ones is
ambiguous, and picking would be a guess about which function you meant — a
name that is the tail of exactly *one* is not a guess, and resolves.
Functions the checker invented — a lifted handler-bind clause, which carries
an `fparent` — are left out entirely: nobody wrote that name, so completing it
is noise and jumping to it is meaningless.
And the daemon now makes its own source path absolute before building, because
every location it reports derives from it. `flan dev src/game.flan` from a
project root answered `src/game.flan:12:7`, which an editor can only resolve by
guessing what it was relative to.
lib/dev.ml is the only compiler file touched: a `defs` op, its three list
builders, and the one `realpath` in `start`. Nothing existing changed shape —
`describe`, `eval` and `eval-expr` answer byte for byte what they did.
The reload path had never seen a restart-case or a handler-bind: the
acceptance table's dev build proves whole-program codegen with cells, but not
Emit.redefinition, where the callees are declares or cell loads and the restart
frame is an alloca in a module the process was not built with. Driving it found
a hole step 1 left - a lifted clause was numbered by its position in the whole
program's lifted list, so the name was neither stable against an unrelated
handler-bind being added nor attributable to the function it came out of, and
redefining a function that established a handler died in llc with an undefined
value.
A clause is now named after its parent - handler/step/0/Missing - and carries
Tast.fn.fparent, which is what lets a redefinition module emit the clauses
belonging to the bodies it is replacing and nothing else. They are hidden for
the same reason a redefined body is: taking the address of an interposable
symbol would resolve to the host's copy, so the module would install the very
handler it was replacing. A clause is reached by address from its parent and
from nowhere else, so it is kept out of the cell and registry machinery
entirely rather than given a slot nobody uses.
test_dev.ml now sends a third evaluation: step redefined to a restart-case
whose frame is an alloca in the new module, whose guarded call goes through the
host's cell, and whose transfer starts in a handler and crosses probe, which
the host was compiled with. The transcript's fourth line is the clause's value.
Its stdout is a pipe into the daemon now, and whatever it printed since the
last reply rides along with the next one into *flan-output*. Arriving with a
reply rather than by a separate request is the point: the output an evaluation
itself caused is the output anyone wants to see.
Draining that pipe is a liveness requirement, not a nicety. A pipe nobody reads
fills at 64K and the next write blocks the program forever, so it is read from
the accept loop's select whether or not an editor is asking, and the buffer is
capped - a program printing every frame must not grow the daemon without limit,
and the newest text is the useful end.
test_dev read the program's transcript off the daemon's stdout, which is no
longer where it goes; it collects :output from replies instead, which is also
what the editor does. The emacs test moved to a fixture that keeps running,
since it now evaluates more times than the old one had reloads to give.
A different primitive from redefining a name. There is no name to install a
body into, so the expression is wrapped in a function with nowhere to be called
from; the module exports flan_reload_call to say "run this once", and the agent
calls it after the install - on the game thread, at a frame boundary, so an
expression that reads the program's state sees a point the program agrees is
consistent.
Nothing is marshalled back because nothing could be. A Flan value carries no
header, so no code at run time can say what it is; the compiler knows the type
and renders it there, in the thunk. That is the layout decision's bill, and it
is why the printer set is the scalars rather than everything.
The rendering does not go through stdout. Stdout belongs to the program, it is
in the hot path for anything that prints, and a dev-only feature must not put a
branch in it - so flan_rt.c is untouched and the value goes to flan_dev_result,
read back over the agent's socket. Safe without a handshake because the
generation counter is bumped last: the daemon waits for it to move rather than
assuming the program has reached a frame boundary.
u64 refuses by name, because i64->bytes is signed and anything past 2^63 would
come back negative. Everything without a derived printer refuses the same way.
A number that is quietly wrong is the failure this whole thing exists to
prevent.
An evaluation is not a declaration: the thunk is built against the program and
never spliced into it, so describe does not fill up with an eval/N for every
expression ever typed.
The test that matters is the same expression twice. The fixture increments
ticks every frame, so two evaluations must disagree - a value computed in the
compiler, or read from a copy of the program's state, would not.
The piece between an editor and everything else. One long-lived Session, the
program it belongs to launched and owned by the same process, and a socket that
takes forms and installs them. What it adds over flan reload is that the
session persists - a defvar added by one evaluation is part of what the next is
checked against - and that it owns the build, which is what makes its layout
rules describe the process actually running rather than a guess about it.
The protocol is s-expressions rather than bencode, and I changed my mind about
that. The case for nREPL was reusing a designed op set and not re-litigating
session identity, but with the client ours too there is no CIDER to be
compatible with, its eval is string-in/string-out with no slot for which form
from which file, and Emacs already has read and prin1. So: one sexp per
message, length framed because the payload contains newlines. No parsing code
on the editor side, and on this side the parser is the language's own reader,
where :op is already a keyword and Flan source is already a string literal. An
nREPL front end can sit on the same Session later; it should not gate the
editor.
Two silent failures the daemon refuses to have. The agent socket is chosen by
the daemon and forced through FLAN_AGENT_SOCKET before spawning, because a
program's source has to name some path and a daemon that guessed would compile,
build and deliver a module to nobody. And delivery is checked: agent/start
returning 0 means a socket was bound, not that anyone connected, so a failed
connect or a reply that is not ok becomes an error the editor sees.
It waits for the program to bind before accepting an evaluation, since one
arriving first fails for a reason that reads like a compiler bug, and it
accepts with a timeout so a program that has exited takes the daemon with it
instead of leaving an editor waiting on a socket nobody serves.
