jolt/host/chez/seed
Yogthos 712cab5265 WP: don't let a recursive pass-through poison a param to :any
The whole-program fixpoint collects a self-recursive call's arg types into the
fn's own params. When a recursive call threads a param straight through unchanged
(same arg, same position — e.g. ray-cast passing `hittables` to itself), that arg's
type is the param's own current type: :any until external callers determine it. And
:any is absorbing, so collecting it pinned the param at :any forever — the type a
caller supplied (a vector of records) was lost, and the fn's field reads stayed
generic.

Skip a same-position pass-through arg in the self-recursion collection (contribute
the join identity). It can't add information — param i ⊇ param i is trivial — so
dropping it is sound; the param is still constrained by every external caller and
by any non-pass-through recursive arg. Applies to both self-recursion paths: a
`defn` recursing through its var, and a named fn literal recursing via its
self-local.

This is why ray-cast's `ray` typed (its recursion passes a fresh ray) but
`hittables` didn't (passed through). With the fix, hittables keeps its
vec<Sphere> element type, so hit-all's reduce element — and hit-sphere's reads —
type without any hint: ray tracer 38.4s -> 31.3s (~1.23x) with no annotations.

run-wp.ss: a recursive fn threading a vec param through keeps its element type.
make test / shakesmoke green, selfhost holds, 0 new divergences.
2026-06-26 12:29:18 -04:00
..
image.ss WP: don't let a recursive pass-through poison a param to :any 2026-06-26 12:29:18 -04:00
prelude.ss See through or/and in truthy-elision (#224) 2026-06-26 06:11:35 +00:00
README.md Docs: Chez-only, drop the Janet-era references and obsolete migration notes 2026-06-22 09:05:35 -04:00

Chez bootstrap seed

These two files are the bootstrap compiler for jolt — the seed that makes the build self-hosting:

  • prelude.ss — the clojure.core prelude (all tiers + clojure.string/walk/ template/edn/set/pprint) as Scheme def-var! forms.
  • image.ss — the compiler image (jolt.ir + jolt.analyzer + jolt.backend-scheme) as Scheme def-var! forms.

Both are generated, not hand-written. They are checked in because a fresh checkout must be able to build jolt-on-Chez using only Chez: host/chez/bootstrap.ss loads this seed, then rebuilds the prelude + image from the .clj/.ss sources via the on-Chez compiler (read → analyze → emit, all on Chez). The seed is a joint byte-fixpoint: rebuilding from an up-to-date seed reproduces it exactly. make selfhost (host/chez/selfcheck.sh) runs host/chez/bootstrap.ss and diffs the rebuilt artifacts against the checked-in seed.

Re-minting

When the seed sources change (the core tiers, the compiler namespaces, the host contract, the reader, emit-image.ss), the seed drifts and make selfhost fails. Re-mint it by running host/chez/bootstrap.ss and writing the freshly rebuilt prelude/image back to host/chez/seed/prelude.ss / host/chez/seed/image.ss, then commit the refreshed files.