The real bug behind the case/cond-> fixpoint regression wasn't gensym — it was
build ordering. A top-level defn in a pre-kernel tier (the fresh-sym helper these
macros need) gets compiled in compile mode, and that lazily builds the self-hosted
analyzer via ensure-analyzer. 00-syntax loads before 00-kernel, so the analyzer
was built against a core missing mapv/second/peek/...: its references to them were
interned as forward-ref nil cells in jolt.analyzer. Those nil cells then shadowed
the real clojure.core defs when the analyzer rebuilt itself (stage2), so the
analyzer's own mapv calls went to nil — 'Cannot call nil as a function'. Only
variadic-heavy paths (juxt+mapv) surfaced it.
build-compiler! already documented that the kernel must be loaded first; nothing
enforced it. Gate ensure-analyzer on a :kernel-ready? flag set after the kernel
tier loads. A pre-kernel compile now falls back to the interpreter (compile-and-eval
already handles that) instead of building the analyzer too early. fresh-sym ends up
interpreted during 00-syntax load, which is fine.
With ordering fixed, case and cond-> move to 00-syntax (they need a real gensym, so
syntax-quote auto-gensym alone won't do). conformance 228x3, fixpoint stage1==2==3,
clojure-test-suite 3930, full suite green, bench flat.
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