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Exact
Yogthos f80f9aab4b One IRef seam: watches/validators/meta over atom, var, and agent 
add-watch/remove-watch/set-validator!/get-validator were atom-only; the
atom ctor ignored :meta and :validator; watching a var crashed. Now the
ARef contract is one seam: atoms keep their record slots (hot path
unchanged), every other reference type registers a predicate and stores
watches/validators in identity-keyed side tables, and notifies at its
mutation points. Vars notify on root changes (def on a watched var,
var-set outside a thread binding, alter-var-root — thread-binding sets
don't notify, like the JVM); agents notify per action. The def-var! wrap
costs two weak-table probes per def and does IRef work only on a watched
var.

Ctor options follow ARef: the validator gates the initial value
(IllegalStateException 'Invalid reference state' — also the class for
rejected swap!/reset!), :meta must be a map (else ClassCastException),
nil allowed. meta reads any reference through the identity side-table
(the type-gated fall-through is gone); alter-meta!/reset-meta! work on
non-var references.

Runtime-only (no re-mint). 9 JVM-certified corpus rows; spec entry; cts
baseline 5781 -> 5805 pass, 73 baselined namespaces (the residual error
in the watch namespaces is their STM ref section — refs stay out of
scope).
2026-07-02 09:07:00 -04:00
..
00-front-matter.md Docs: Chez-only, drop the Janet-era references and obsolete migration notes 2026-06-22 09:05:35 -04:00
02-reader.md Run core.memoize's test suite on jolt 2026-06-25 13:23:05 -04:00
03-special-forms.md spec: set! now supports deftype mutable fields 2026-06-22 01:19:21 -04:00
09-core-library.md One IRef seam: watches/validators/meta over atom, var, and agent 2026-07-02 09:07:00 -04:00
coverage.md Honor *print-length* / *print-level* / *default-data-reader-fn* 2026-06-26 19:04:42 -04:00
README.md Clean up codebase: rename stdlib layer, strip porting residue, fix tooling 2026-06-22 22:18:00 -04:00

README.md

The Clojure Language Specification (Draft)

A normative, implementation-independent specification of the Clojure language, developed alongside jolt's self-hosted compiler and validated by its executable conformance suites. Why: Clojure has no spec — every alternative implementation re-derives semantics from the reference implementation and folklore. See the RFC for motivation, scope, evidence sources, and process: ../rfc/0001-language-specification.md.

Documents

Doc Content Status
00-front-matter.md conformance terms, entry format, host classification drafted
02-reader.md token grammar + reader-macro catalog drafted
01, 04–08 see chapter plan in front matter planned
03-special-forms.md special-form catalog + normative exemplars (if, let*) exemplars
09-core-library.md per-var entry format + exemplars (first, reduce, parse-uuid) exemplars
coverage.md generated dashboard over the 694-var surface generated
../grammar.ebnf reader surface syntax (EBNF), companion to 02-reader.md reference

Regenerate the dashboard after surface changes: python3 tools/spec_coverage.py (reads tools/clojuredocs-export.json and probes a working jolt checkout via bin/joltc).

Current numbers (2026-06-22)

Of the 694 clojure.core vars in the ClojureDocs inventory, jolt interns 574. Broadly:

  • 568 implemented in jolt and exercised by the behavioral suites
  • 6 implemented but not directly tested — each gets a test with its spec entry
  • 6 portable but absent from jolt's resolvable surface (the REPL history vars *1/*2/*3/*e, plus letfn/re-groups, which work but aren't interned where resolve can see them) — tracked as gaps
  • the rest classified host/JVM/concurrency (see the dashboard for the full per-var breakdown — it is the source of truth)

How this connects to the test suites

  • test/chez/corpus.edn — the host-neutral behavioral corpus, one row per case ({:suite :label :expected :actual}). The Chez compiler evaluates each case via host/chez/run-corpus.ss (run with make corpus), and test/conformance/certify.clj certifies every :expected against reference JVM Clojure (run with make certify). Spec entries cite these cases.
  • test/conformance/ — the certification tooling and classified divergences (certify.clj, known-divergences.edn); see its README.md and SPEC.md.
  • vendor/clojure-test-suite — the cross-dialect suite (≥4081 assertions passing); dialect splits there are classification evidence.
  • jank's per-construct corpus (~/src/jank/compiler+runtime/test/jank) is the granularity model for §2/§3 conformance.

The invariant: every numbered normative statement names its conformance test, or is marked UNVERIFIED. The spec cannot drift from the implementations that check it.