45876998ad
Bring the docs in line with the actual implementation now that Chez is the sole substrate. Deleted the migration/spike/handoff artifacts that only documented the Janet era or the port effort: the port plan, phase-0 and foundational-runtime spike writeups (+ the stray root-level copy), the self-hosting design notes, the architecture-refactor plan, and spike/chez/RESULTS.md. Rewrote the current reference docs against the Chez facts: building-and-deps and tools-deps (no jpm/build step — bin/joltc off the checked-in seed, deps via jolt.deps into ~/.jolt/gitlibs), libraries (SQLite is built-in jdbc.core over libsqlite3, not a Janet driver), the conformance/spec test-flow docs (the Chez corpus runner + certify, no .janet harnesses), and the transient / type-hint / seed-overlay design notes (Chez representations: mutable transients, flat copy-on-write vectors, HAMT maps, the seed/overlay twin). Fixed the README collections line (vectors aren't 32-way tries) and added the ffi/transient gate targets. rfc 0001's numerics open-question is resolved (the Scheme tower). Renamed the built-in HTTP adapter to jolt.http.server only (dropped the ring-janet.adapter alias — a Janet-era name). |
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|---|---|---|
| .github/workflows | ||
| bench | ||
| bin | ||
| docs | ||
| host/chez | ||
| img | ||
| jolt-core | ||
| spike/chez | ||
| src/jolt | ||
| test | ||
| tools | ||
| vendor | ||
| .DS_Store | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .gitmodules | ||
| AGENTS.md | ||
| CLAUDE.md | ||
| clojuredocs-export.edn | ||
| clojuredocs-export.json | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README.md | ||
Jolt
A Clojure implementation on Chez Scheme.
Jolt reads Clojure source, analyzes it to a host-neutral IR, emits Scheme, and
runs it on Chez. The compiler is self-hosted: it is written in Clojure
(jolt-core/) and compiles itself. It ships a Clojure-compatible standard library.
Requirements
Only Chez Scheme (the gate invokes it as
chez). The conformance gate additionally uses Clojure on the JVM as an oracle,
but running jolt does not.
Build
There is no build step. The bootstrap seed (host/chez/seed/{prelude,image}.ss)
is checked in, so a fresh clone runs immediately:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/jolt-lang/jolt.git
cd jolt
bin/joltc -e '(+ 1 2)' # => 3
After changing a compiler source — the reader (host/chez/reader.ss), the
analyzer/IR/backend (jolt-core/jolt/*.clj), or the clojure.core overlay
(jolt-core/clojure/core/*.clj) — re-mint the seed:
make remint # iterates host/chez/bootstrap.ss to a byte-fixpoint
Run
bin/joltc -e EXPR # evaluate a Clojure expression and print the result
$ bin/joltc -e '(->> (range 10) (filter even?) (map (fn [x] (* x x))) (reduce +))'
120
$ bin/joltc -e '(/ 1 2)'
1/2
Architecture
A small Chez runtime (host/chez/*.ss: value model, persistent collections, seqs,
vars/namespaces, host interop) hosts a portable Clojure overlay (jolt-core/): the
reader/analyzer/IR/backend (jolt-core/jolt/) and clojure.core in
dependency-ordered tiers (jolt-core/clojure/core/NN-*.clj). The stdlib namespaces
(clojure.string/set/walk/edn/pprint/…) are portable Clojure under
src/jolt/clojure/.
bin/joltc loads the checked-in seed and the spine, then compiles and evaluates on
Chez (read → analyze → IR → emit → eval). host/chez/bootstrap.ss rebuilds that
seed from source on pure Chez; the build is a self-hosting fixpoint (a rebuild
reproduces the checked-in seed byte-for-byte).
Differences from Clojure
Jolt targets Clojure semantics but runs on Chez, not the JVM.
- Host platform. No JVM and no Java interop —
import,gen-class,proxyof Java classes, andjava.*are unavailable. A class token resolves to a name; a small set of host classes is recognized forinstance?. - Numbers. The full Scheme numeric tower, matching the JVM: exact integers and
bignums, exact ratios (
(/ 1 2)⇒1/2), and flonum doubles.=is category-aware ((= 3 3.0)⇒false);==is value-equality ((== 3 3.0)⇒true).integer?/int?are exact integers,float?/double?are flonums,ratio?is an exact non-integer. NoBigDecimal(decimal?is always false). - Concurrency.
future/promise/agent/pmaprun on real OS threads over a shared heap, matching JVM semantics (not isolated-heap snapshots). Atoms use a per-atom mutex with JVM-style CAS.clojure.core.asyncprovides blocking channels andgo/<!/>!/alts!/timeout. - Regex. Backed by irregex (vendored), PCRE/Java-style patterns.
- Collections. Immutable persistent vectors, cons lists, and HAMT maps/sets.
Hash-map/hash-set iteration order is unspecified — use
sorted-map/sorted-setwhen order matters. Transients are real mutable scratch collections.
Supported and Clojure-compatible: lazy/infinite sequences, transducers,
destructuring, multimethods with hierarchies, protocols/records
(deftype/defrecord/reify/extend-protocol), metadata, namespaces, runtime
eval/load-string/defmacro, and the reader (#(), #_, #?, tagged literals,
#"…").
Test
make test # the full gate
make corpus # conformance corpus vs the JVM-sourced spec
make unit # host-specific unit cases
make selfhost # bootstrap fixpoint (rebuild == checked-in seed)
make smoke # bin/joltc CLI smoke
make sci # load borkdude/sci's source through joltc (compat stress)
make ffi # HTTP-server GC-safety + http-client temp paths
make transient # transient mutation + linear-time builds
make certify # JVM oracle (skips if clojure is absent)
The conformance corpus (test/chez/corpus.edn) is a host-neutral language spec
whose expected values are sourced from reference JVM Clojure. See
test/conformance/SPEC.md.