Iter 14e: explicit, verified tail calls

Decision 8 ships. Term::App and Term::Do gain tail: bool with
serde-default false and skip-when-false serialisation. New
typecheck pass verify_tail_positions enforces tail-position rules
(Scheme-style propagation through match arms, seq.rhs, let body,
lam body). Codegen emits musttail call for marked App calls.

Hash invariance verified: only the two migrated print_list defs
(list_map_poly.print_list, sort.print_list) changed hashes; all
other defs across all 18 fixtures kept bit-identical hashes —
confirms the skip-when-false serialisation rule works.

Tests 76 -> 79: tail_call_in_non_tail_position_is_rejected,
tail_call_in_tail_position_is_accepted, plus an IR-grep e2e test
asserting that print_list's recursive call site emits musttail
in the lowered IR. Existing 25 e2e tests unchanged in behaviour
(map -> [2,3,4], sort -> sorted list).

IR evidence at the recursive site:
  %v7 = musttail call i8 @ail_list_map_poly_print_list(ptr %v6)
  ret i8 %v7

Two deviations called out in the implementer report and JOURNAL:
1. tail-do uses tail call, not musttail. Cross-type return
   (runtime helpers return i32, AILang Unit is i8) would have
   LLVM reject musttail. Path is implemented but not exercised
   by any current fixture; proper fix is runtime-helper signature
   change, punted.
2. block_terminated flag in codegen so tail-call emit
   (musttail call + ret) doesn't get a duplicate trailing ret
   from surrounding code (match-arm phi, fn-body, lambda thunk).
   Internal plumbing; required for IR well-formedness.

Form (A) productions now at ~30, exactly the constraint-1
budget. Future surface additions need to retire something or
explicit-budget-rebalance in DESIGN.md.

GC notes from implementer survey land in JOURNAL:
- Allocations cluster in lower_ctor; every term-ctor does
  malloc(8+8n).
- Tail recursion does not reduce alloc pressure, only stack.
  For map-style ctor-blocked recursions, allocation IS the
  bottleneck.
- Per-fn arena is sound only when fn return type contains no
  boxed ADT. Most current fixtures violate this.

Plan 14f: Boehm conservative GC (GC_malloc, -lgc) as a first
cut. Single-iter integration, no AST/schema change. Stress
test: build a 100k Cons list, observe RSS doesn't blow up.

After 14f the language is feature-complete enough for stdlib
work (15a).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-05-07 17:16:28 +02:00
parent 8d97a924de
commit d64031c234
16 changed files with 768 additions and 81 deletions
+22
View File
@@ -200,10 +200,18 @@ pub enum Term {
Var { name: String },
/// Function application. `callee` is evaluated to a function value;
/// `args` are evaluated left-to-right.
///
/// Iter 14e: `tail` marks this call as occurring in tail position
/// (per Decision 8). When set, codegen lowers the call as
/// `musttail call`. The flag defaults to `false` and is omitted
/// during canonical-JSON serialisation when unset, so pre-14e
/// fixtures keep bit-identical hashes.
App {
#[serde(rename = "fn")]
callee: Box<Term>,
args: Vec<Term>,
#[serde(default, skip_serializing_if = "is_false")]
tail: bool,
},
/// Let-binding: `value` is evaluated and bound to `name` in `body`.
Let {
@@ -213,9 +221,13 @@ pub enum Term {
},
/// Effect operation invocation (e.g. `do print "hi"`). The `op` is
/// resolved against the effect-handler table at link time.
///
/// Iter 14e: see [`Term::App`] for the `tail` field semantics.
Do {
op: String,
args: Vec<Term>,
#[serde(default, skip_serializing_if = "is_false")]
tail: bool,
},
/// Constructor application. `type_name` binds the ADT, `ctor` the
/// variant. Example: `Some(42)` ->
@@ -402,3 +414,13 @@ impl PartialEq for Type {
}
}
impl Eq for Type {}
/// Serde helper for `#[serde(skip_serializing_if = "is_false")]`.
///
/// Used by [`Term::App::tail`] and [`Term::Do::tail`] (Iter 14e) so the
/// `tail` flag is omitted from the canonical JSON whenever it is false,
/// preserving bit-identical hashes for every pre-14e definition.
#[allow(clippy::trivially_copy_pass_by_ref)]
fn is_false(b: &bool) -> bool {
!*b
}