writeonce/docs/stories/language-runtime-database/00-story.md
shoney.arickathil 641a41e25c feat: milestone 1 complete — .wob emitter, conformance corpus, single binary; GC redesign specced
- `woc` now emits `.wob` that `wovm` runs: emit.ml lowers the typed,
  owner-annotated AST (scope-stack registers with a >64 WO-E401 diagnostic,
  Lua-style call windows, ICALL by slot, dedup const pool, drop maps, line
  tables, implicit terminators); disasm.ml backs `--dump-bc` goldens.
- Ownership lowering consumes the four owner tables verbatim; RESIDUAL is the
  only source of borrow ops, coalesced per operand. Review caught the emitter
  consuming only 2 of owner.ml's 4 residual producers — an assignment-anchored
  aliasing violation ran to exit 0 instead of trapping; fixed, plus a backstop
  raising WO-E404 for any residual region left unconsumed.
- Conformance harness `scripts/oop-e2e.sh` (`just oop-e2e`): four fixture
  kinds with exact outcomes — byte-exact stdout, one WO-E### anchored on
  `error CODE:`, numeric trap code, gc trace. 25 fixtures incl. pricing-demo
  logic, the ownership suite, and DB_STUB's parse-but-trap. `tests/` un-ignored
  so the corpus is actually tracked.
- `woc build` produces a self-contained binary: wovm copy + appended image +
  20-byte trailer, self-exec via /proc/self/exe. Verified relocated outside
  the repo, argless, and against adversarial trailer corruption.
- Milestone 1's five spec criteria all MET (`just oop-accept`). Criterion 3
  closed by WO-E405 — the entry must return `Int`, since program mode already
  says its return value is the exit code — which deletes the leak class
  without adding return-type metadata to the format. `gc/held-cycle` retired:
  an externally-held cycle is not expressible in a post-exit pump.
- New spec: inferred GC + incremental per-shard tri-color mark-sweep, retiring
  `@gc` and reference counting. Story gains iterations 7b (that work) and 9b
  (`@table`, relations, compiler-checked query); `.dev/reference` gains a
  sparse System.Linq checkout. Priority: 5→6→7 (log-watcher) then 7b, 8, 9, 9b.
2026-08-11 19:31:26 +02:00

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Story — one language, one runtime, one database, one binary

Format: fiberloom product/story-template (tech-unit standard artifact). Sources consulted: fiberloom tech-unit/framework, product/story-template, product/story-iteration-template.

AS a developer building and operating my own products end to end

I WANT a new programming language — with arithmetic, ownership-based memory safety, and garbage collection applied automatically wherever ownership alone cannot express the shape — whose compiler, runtime, and database ship as a single never-stopping Linux binary that can update its own code in place

TO write an application once and run it forever: no external stack to assemble, no database server to operate, and deployments that swap code inside the running process with instant rollback.

User Value

  • One artifact is the whole system: the language's runtime owns the data, serves the API, and carries its own source — the "which commit is prod running?" class of questions disappears.
  • Memory safety without a GC tax: Rust-shaped borrowing (single owner, second-class borrows) checked mostly at compile time, and where ownership cannot express the shape the compiler decides — no annotation to write, and collection stays per-shard so no global pause exists by construction (iteration 7b; iterations 1–7 shipped a per-class @gc opt-in instead).
  • Updates are blue-green inside the runtime: propose, approve, compile in-process, atomic switch, previous version resident for instant rollback.
  • The runtime is a recipe box: once language + runtime + database exist, a web framework arrives as a .wo library composing runtime capabilities — the recorded next story.

Background & Constraints

writeonce today is a declarative Rust-based runtime (Stage 2). This story evolves it into an object-oriented language (woc OCaml compiler, wovm C VM) per the approved specs: C as the runtime's basis (libc only), no inheritance ever, mutable value semantics for borrowing, shard-per-core concurrency with ownership-moving messages, RAM-authoritative data under a WAL, and the blue-green VM pair for in-runtime deployment. Target OS is Linux; kernel primitives are the framework. The Rust runtime retires only at parity. Constraints: OCaml stdlib only, C libc only; docs live under docs/; prose-only planning artifacts (no implementation code in stories or iterations); no commits by agents — drafts go to .dev/commit.md.

Iterations (review in this order)

# Iteration Delivers
1 Principles doc docs/00-principles.md — the doctrine page every later slice links back to
2 VM core wovm: .wob loader, register interpreter, arena, borrow word, @gc collector
3 Compiler front woc: lexer → parser → typechecker → ownership pass, diagnostics
4 Single binary end-to-end emitter + conformance corpus + woc build self-contained binary
5 Language surface Haxe-parity adoptions: switch, records, optionals, try/catch, statics, modules…
6 Program mode + stdlib fn main, exit codes, fs/proc/net/time/json builtins
7 log-watcher proof the driving workload compiled and detecting silent deaths live
7b Inferred GC + mark-sweep @gc removed from the language; compiler infers GC-ness; RC replaced by incremental per-shard tri-color mark-sweep
8 Shard-actor runtime thread-per-core shards, per-shard heaps, ownership-move messaging
9 Database engine class-shaped tables, typed WAL + recovery, insert/select execute
9b @table, relations, query @table becomes real storage; typed ref/backlink/multi relations; compiler-checked LINQ-shaped queries lowered to engine ops
10 HTTP service layer service blocks route to VM methods; REST parity with Stage 2
11 Fibers green threads on the shard scheduler: reduction-budget preemption, park on I/O
12 Blue-green deploy two VM slots, in-runtime compile, atomic switch, resident rollback

Review protocol: the developer reads one iteration, approves or amends; the next starts only after approval. Each iteration is an unsplittable value slice with its own acceptance criteria (Given/When/Then), out-of-scope list, and a pointer to the plan document that already sequences its tasks.

  • OOP core spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-01-oop-compiler-vm-design.md
  • Systems track spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-01-systems-track-design.md
  • Blue-green spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-03-blue-green-vm-design.md
  • Sample+principles spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-07-logwatcher-sample-and-principles-design.md
  • Plan documents: docs/superpowers/plans/ (plans 1–10), compiler/plan/ (2, 3, 8 + architecture)
  • Roadmap map: docs/08-project-structure.md (build sequence)
  • Behavioral reference workload: ~/projects/log-watcher (Haxe daemon)

Notes

  • Acceptance criteria live in each iteration file; this story frames the outcome.
  • Critical path (locked 2026-08-08): compile and run log-watcher. Iterations 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 → 7 are the committed line; nothing off that line lands before iteration 7's acceptance. Then 7b, then 8–12 (with 9b after the database engine).
  • Iteration 7b (inserted 2026-08-11) sits after the critical path deliberately: it delays nothing on the log-watcher line, and it must precede iteration 8 because the collector should be settled before shards multiply. It also closes iteration 4's one open gate clause and supersedes part of iteration 2's memory model — neither is renumbered; both point here.
  • Future iterations, after iteration 11 (parked 2026-08-08 — recorded, not scheduled):
    • WO-W201 @gc-suggestion diagnostic refinement — superseded by iteration 7b: the diagnostic is retired outright, because inference replaces the suggestion it existed to make.
    • WO-E225 unknown-type validation broadened to ref/multi/map element types and method/fn signatures.
    • ADT container roster adoption (Stack, Queue, Set, Tree, Graph, … — see the roster section in docs/plan/compiler/nullable-types-implementation.md); log-watcher needs only multi/map, so no ADT lands before iteration 7.
  • Recorded future stories, deliberately outside this one: the web framework as a .wo library over the recipe-box runtime; UI (##ui SSR + live patches); script-based destructive schema migrations; MCP/agent wrapper over the management plane.