Phase 1.final of the flat-memory comptime VM — wire the host through it,
reach corpus parity, and gate it behind a build flag — plus the first
Phase 3 (compiler-API) step. Default OFF; legacy interpreter unchanged.
Host wiring + hardening:
- Machine accessors return error.OutOfBounds (no debug panic) on bad
addresses; Frame.get/set bounds-check and bail (no panic) on a malformed
operand ref (e.g. a ret Ref.none from an unresolved name).
- tryEval routed at both comptime call sites in emit_llvm — the const-init
fold and the #run side-effect path — with per-eval legacy fallback;
yields .void_val for void/noreturn entries. Both sites sx_trace_clear()
before the legacy fallback so a partial VM run that pushed trace frames
doesn't double-push on re-run.
VM coverage (all corpus const-inits except the inline-asm global):
- Implicit context materialized from the __sx_default_context global; the
full allocator protocol runs on the VM (context.allocator.alloc ->
call_indirect -> CAllocator thunk -> libc_malloc -> native flat malloc).
- Native libc memory builtins (malloc/calloc/free/memcpy/memmove/memset)
on flat memory; f32 stored/loaded as the 4-byte single; signed sub-64-bit
loads sign-extended; global_get (lazy + memoized); func_ref/call_indirect
(func-ref encoded fid+1, 0 reserved for null); string/slice fat-pointer
field access; is_comptime; the failable/error cluster (error_set tuples,
trace_frame + native sx_trace_push/clear -> raise/catch/or + return traces).
Build flag + Phase 3 seed:
- -Dcomptime-flat (build_opts module) OR SX_COMPTIME_FLAT env enables the VM;
zig build test -Dcomptime-flat runs the full corpus on the VM (688/0).
- intern/text_of serviced natively on flat memory via Vm.callCompilerFn
(compiler_welded boundary) — the seed the rest of the compiler-API grows on.
Parity 688/688 gate ON and OFF. Unit tests added throughout. The
lowering-time #insert wiring was explored and reverted (lowering-time IR can
be malformed; full malformed-IR hardening is a prerequisite, deferred).
The byte-weld (sx structs whose layout was validated to mirror the
compiler's Zig records) plus the serialization/marshaling bridge was the
wrong direction: it bolted a parallel layout regime and hand-built
byte-copies onto a comptime value model that fundamentally isn't bytes.
Strip the struct-weld machinery:
- compiler_lib.zig loses the type registry (weldStruct / bound_types /
BoundType / FieldLayout / findType / SxField / LayoutMismatch /
validateStructLayout); it is now just the intern/text_of function
host-call bridge (kept as the Phase-3 compiler-call seed).
- nominal.zig loses validateWeldedStruct / weldedFieldOrderStr + the
sd.abi == .zig validation call.
- Remove the struct-weld unit tests and examples 0625/0627 (welded
structs) + 1183/1186 (weld-layout diagnostics).
- The #library / abi / extern syntax stays.
Record the new direction: a bytecode VM over flat, byte-addressable
memory so comptime values are native bytes (no weld/validation/marshal),
target-aware (preserves cross-compilation) and sandboxed. See
current/PLAN-COMPILER-VM.md (Phase 0 strip -> Phase 1 flat-memory value
model -> Phase 2 bytecode -> Phase 3 compiler-API on flat memory).
design/comptime-compiler-api.md gets a SUPERSEDED banner. Also drop the
"~500 lines / split the step" rule from CLAUDE.md.