jolt/docs/spec
Yogthos d61c86a068 core: Stage 3 turn 2b — host IO, ns introspection, thread-binding family
The names turn 2a's leak removal exposed as honestly missing, now proper:

- slurp/spit/flush (host-classified): path-based IO over Janet files; spit
  takes :append; flush flushes *out*. printf prints formatted (no newline)
  over the existing format. file-seq walks paths via two host dir primitives
  through the overlay's tree-seq.
- ns-map / ns-unmap / ns-refers (ctx fns). ns-refers required fixing the
  refer MODEL: refer/use/:refer now map the SOURCE VAR into the target ns
  (the Clojure model) instead of copying its value into a new var — so
  source-ns redefinitions propagate, the :macro flag travels for free, and
  refers are identifiable by the var's home :ns.
- Thread-binding family: with-bindings*/with-bindings, bound-fn*/bound-fn,
  bound?, thread-bound?, get-thread-bindings. The captured binding map is a
  Janet struct keyed by the var tables — the exact frame representation
  var-get reads — so it re-pushes correctly (a phm frame is invisible to
  var lookup).
- load-string and eval interned as VALUES at the api layer (they need the
  loader's compile-or-interpret routing); the eval special form still
  handles direct calls.

Suite 4532 -> 4572 (baseline floor 4540 across timeout variance, clean 86),
conformance 326x3, stdlib battery, all specs+unit (+21 turn-2b rows).
Coverage: missing-portable 27 -> 10 (left: the *in*-model readers, the
with-local-vars/with-precision/extenders tail).
2026-06-10 12:53:47 -04:00
..
00-front-matter.md docs: spec §2 (reader) — grammar, reader-macro catalog, syntax-quote contract 2026-06-10 11:23:38 -04:00
02-reader.md core: #inst instant values + syntax-quote literal collapse (spec 2.3/2.4) 2026-06-10 12:19:23 -04:00
03-special-forms.md docs: language specification RFC + spec skeleton with normative exemplars 2026-06-10 10:53:44 -04:00
09-core-library.md docs: language specification RFC + spec skeleton with normative exemplars 2026-06-10 10:53:44 -04:00
coverage.md core: Stage 3 turn 2b — host IO, ns introspection, thread-binding family 2026-06-10 12:53:47 -04:00
README.md docs: language specification RFC + spec skeleton with normative exemplars 2026-06-10 10:53:44 -04:00

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
01-evaluation.md08-macros.md 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

Regenerate the dashboard after surface changes: python3 tools/spec_coverage.py (requires clojuredocs-export.json in the repo root and a working jolt checkout).

Current numbers (2026-06-10)

Of the 694 clojure.core vars in the ClojureDocs inventory:

  • 380 implemented in jolt and exercised by the behavioral suites
  • 154 implemented but not directly tested — each gets a test with its spec entry
  • 35 portable but missing from jolt (parse-long/parse-double/ parse-boolean, update-keys/update-vals, macroexpand, time, partitionv/partitionv-all/splitv-at, with-redefs, with-open, reader fns, ns-introspection stragglers, …) — tracked as implementation gaps
  • 22 resolvable in code but invisible to ns introspection (resolve/ns-publics can't see seed-fallback names like compare, gensym, type) — a conformance finding in its own right
  • the rest classified host/JVM/concurrency (see dashboard)

How this connects to the test suites

  • test/integration/conformance-test.janet — 302 assertions, each run through three independent execution paths (interpreter, bootstrap compiler, self-hosted compiler) that must agree. Spec entries cite these.
  • test/spec/*.janet — ~1,500 behavioral cases organized by topic.
  • 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.