Tab switching during a long-running eval used to silently abandon
the calc — output stopped streaming, no snapshot, nothing to come
back to. Now setActiveTab pauses the outgoing tab's eval (and
optionally portal-saves the env), terminates the worker, and on
re-entry hydrates + re-fires the original input.
Pieces:
* serve-coop.py + make serve-repl — dev server that emits
Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin and
Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp so SharedArrayBuffer
is constructable in the browser. Same headers production needs.
* C tier eval-loop pause poll — c/eval.c grows lumbda_check_pause(),
guarded by #ifdef LUMBDA_WASM. Called at the top of leval()'s
while(1); masked to every 1024th iteration so the polling cost
stays under noise floor. When the JS-library import
js_lumbda_pause_requested returns 1, lisp_error("paused")
longjmps out so module-global env survives intact for the
portal-snapshot that follows.
* SAB plumbing — main thread allocates new SharedArrayBuffer(4),
hands it through worker config → runner.setPauseFlag →
lumbda-c.loader.setPauseFlag → globalThis._lumbdaCPauseFlag.
Atomics.store / Atomics.load on index 0 is the signalling
channel. Falls back to null when COOP/COEP isn't isolated, in
which case pause degrades to a hard worker.terminate().
* autoPauseTab() — on setActiveTab away, snapshots the tier
(C tier with SAB) or hard-cancels (other tiers / no SAB),
stashes tab.autoPause = {tier, blob, inputSrc, savedAt},
terminates the workers so the heap is reclaimed.
* autoResumeTab() — on setActiveTab into a tab with autoPause,
reboots the tier, hydrates MEMFS, runs (portal-load! ...), then
re-fires the original input via sendInput so the eval restarts
from the saved state. Asm + Python paths re-run from scratch
until their poll sites land.
Also closes two UX papercuts from fox: chip ⇣ export icon bumped
from 0.85em muted to 1em green so it's actually discoverable; the
scope toggle now reads "scope: this tab" / "scope: all tabs" so the
button label describes the state rather than a target.
Adds a portal-bar to the REPL between tabbar and transcript: a save
button + chip strip showing all saved checkpoints for the active tab.
Click a chip to restore, click × to delete.
Per-tier strategy:
* c, python — call the tier's (portal-snapshot! NAME), then read the
JSON blob out of MEMFS (Emscripten/Pyodide FS) and stash it in the
encrypted vault entry. Restore reverses: hydrate MEMFS, then
(portal-load! NAME) merges the bindings into the live env.
* asm — no portal serializer in the WAT tier yet (would need a
Cheney-aware walk). Falls back to transcript replay: save snapshots
every successful prior input, restore reboots the tier and re-evals
them in order.
Plumbing:
* Worker bridge: new portal-save / portal-load message kinds wire
MEMFS reads/writes to the main thread.
* runner.js exposes portalSave / portalLoad — null when a tier
hasn't implemented portals (asm stays grey).
* C tier: replace EM_JS with extern + --js-library for js_lumbda_bend_call
(EM_JS-generated declaration was unreachable from wasmImports at
instantiate time, browsers threw "import object field ... not a
Function"). FS added to EXPORTED_RUNTIME_METHODS so JS can reach
pyodide.FS / Module.FS for MEMFS I/O.
Smoke-tested all three tiers headlessly: save → chip render → restore
round-trips clean on c / python / asm, zero console errors.
Browser instantiation of lumbda-c.wasm failed with:
Aborted(LinkError: import object field 'js_lumbda_bend_call'
is not a Function)
The wasm correctly required env.js_lumbda_bend_call as a function
import, and the EM_JS-generated function existed in the glue —
emcc placed the function declaration at depth 0 of createLumbdaC
where wasmImports lives, so it SHOULD have been hoisted into scope
at instantiate time. It worked in node test runs but threw on
browser load. The exact emcc-version cause is fuzzy; the fix is
to use the textbook mechanism instead of guessing.
New file wasm/c/bend-call-library.js — Emscripten JS library with
mergeInto(LibraryManager.library, { js_lumbda_bend_call: function(...) }).
mergeInto lands the function directly inside wasmImports under the
mangled name _js_lumbda_bend_call (auto-prefix), wired to the
js_lumbda_bend_call import. No scope guessing.
lumbda_wasm_entry.c — drops EM_JS, keeps the C wrapper bi_bend_call_wasm
and declares extern int js_lumbda_bend_call(...) so emcc emits the
env import that the library fills.
wasm/Makefile — adds --js-library c/bend-call-library.js to C_LDFLAGS
and lists the library as a dependency so changes trigger a rebuild.
Verified: deployed glue at lumbda.com now contains the mergeInto
binding (js_lumbda_bend_call:_js_lumbda_bend_call inside wasmImports).
End-to-end smoke via mocked XHR in node returns the expected
(ok pong) round-trip from the demo's first probe step.
New: wasm/tests/parity-cross-tier.mjs runs the parity-corpus.mjs (216
test cases tagged by whitepaper section / R7RS concept) against three
tiers — native python (reference), c-wasm, asm-wasm — and fails on any
unknown divergence. Known gaps live in KNOWN_DIVERGE so the table stays
green while the bignum / call/cc / etc. work proceeds.
Wired into `make wasm-test` so a regression against any spec claim gets
caught before merge.
Bugs caught and fixed:
- python remainder: was `signed_a % signed_b * sign(a)`, which double-
applied the sign of a (python's % floors) — gave -3 for (-17, 5)
instead of the R7RS-correct -2. Now uses abs() on both sides.
- asm-wasm modulo: was i32.rem_s (truncated, remainder semantics)
where R7RS modulo wants sign of divisor. Added the "if rem and
divisor disagree on sign, add divisor" branch.
Cross-tier numbers after fix:
216 passing
3 known diverge: expt-2-100, expt-3-50, big-arith — all asm-wasm
(no bignums on the asm tier yet; whitepaper §2.1 claim still open)
0 fail
REPL layout: body is now the scroll container, prompt-bar is
position:fixed at the viewport bottom so it doesn't get pushed off
screen by a long transcript. Empty space above the prompt on a fresh
session reads like a terminal.
All other tests still pass: 20 unit, 8 integration, 11 functional.
WASM tail-call instruction wired into every tail position:
if branches, eval_begin last expression, all special-form dispatchers
(cond/when/unless/case/let/let*/letrec/begin/and/or), function
application's $apply, and apply's closure-body $eval_begin.
wat2wasm + wasm-validate now use --enable-tail-call.
Reader fixes:
- Dotted pair syntax: (a b . rest) parses as a real dotted list.
Without this, variadic params and other dotted-cdr forms parsed
as 4-element proper lists.
- Stray ) at top level advances source_ptr instead of spinning
forever. Found via bisection of functional.lsp under TCO.
- eval_args guards against non-pair tails so a misplaced dotted
argument (e.g. an unexpanded macro template) can't deref garbage.
Cross-tier numbers (wasm-test-functional-cross):
before: 93/111 reached, stack overflow on (ack 3 4)
now: progresses through the full TCO section, deep let, named-let
to 100k, mutual recursion to 200k. Still climbing.
Bend gpu demo:
6th playground option ("bend (gpu dispatch) ⚡") ships a SHAKE256
fan-out at 1M inputs via (bend!-call ...). Run button is GUARDED:
if no bend URL is configured, refuses with
"set a bend URL first — this demo is GPU-only by design".
Protects customer machines from burning minutes on a workload the
local tiers cannot finish in reasonable time.
Adds (write x) and (write-string s) primitives. write quotes strings
and #\-prefixes chars — what tests/functional.lsp's assert-equal
uses to print failures.
New target: make wasm-test-functional-cross (also rolled into wasm-test)
runs the 205-assertion tests/functional.lsp against each WASM tier and
reports pass counts:
c-wasm: 205 / 205 (full parity with native c)
asm-wasm: 93 / 111 reaches mid-suite before stack overflow on
a deeply recursive test; the 84% it reaches
passes. Documented progress toward full parity
with asm/lumbda.s.
The runner exit-soft on the asm tier — it's a measurement, not a gate.
Free-form radio adds a 5th demo slot. When selected, a vault bar appears
under the controls: enter a password, "unlock" derives a per-device
vault and decrypts (or creates fresh). Edits in the editor auto-save
350ms after typing stops. Reload + same password restores the code.
Same Web Crypto stack as /repl/ (PBKDF2 + AES-GCM, vault id =
SHA-256(password || device-salt)).
Layout: one shared vertical scroller — code pane and output pane both
grow with content, the body scrolls. No more independent in-pane
scrollers fighting the page.
Home page split into "Demo" and "REPL" sections with their own CTAs.
Interactive REPL at lumbda.com/repl with:
- multi-tab sessions (click + to add, × to close, double-click to rename)
- per-tab tier selector (python/c/asm/all-three race)
- persistent transcripts encrypted in localStorage via Web Crypto
(PBKDF2 + AES-GCM, vault id = SHA-256(password || device-salt) —
same pattern as unsandbox's vault-encryption-design.md, native
crypto.subtle API instead of CryptoJS)
- ephemeral mode (skip vault, transcripts vanish on reload)
- one worker per (tab × tier) — state persists across evals in a tab
- reboot tier button (terminate this tab's worker, fresh state next eval)
- cancel button (kills the running worker in active tab)
Home page now links to both /playground/ and /repl/.
Tier state itself does NOT persist across reloads — the transcript does,
but defines/set!/hash-tables vanish with the worker. Portal save/resume
in WAT (deferred) will let a tier session survive close+reopen.
User-visible changes
- Cancel button — terminates the running worker. Pyodide's slow mandelbrot
no longer freezes the UI; click cancel and the elapsed counter freezes
at "(cancelled @ NNNN ms)".
- Live ms counter ticks per animation frame while a tier is busy, so the
Pyodide tier's ~5-15 s wait is visible instead of looking hung.
- Restyled to match lumbda.com: chunkfive wordmark, --green: #227842
(light) / #5ec07a (dark), lumbda-logo-green.png, lowercase "lumbda"
everywhere. Pulls fonts/chunkfive locally so the playground stays
self-contained.
Architecture
- All tier evaluations now run inside a Web Worker (wasm/app/worker.mjs)
so the main thread stays responsive. Cancel = worker.terminate(); next
eval respawns a fresh worker.
- Loaders use new URL("./...", import.meta.url) so paths resolve against
the loader file's own location — works identically in window and
worker contexts, no baseURL argument needed.
- C tier Emscripten build flipped to EXPORT_ES6=1; loader uses dynamic
`import()` of the factory module. Integration test updated accordingly.
- Python loader uses `import("pyodide.mjs")` (ES module) instead of
document.createElement, which doesn't exist in workers.
Bug fixes
- Asm tier state leak: running the same demo twice on a cached WASM
instance produced corrupted output (every other cell on row 2+ rendered
as " " instead of the expected shade char). Root cause: top-level eval
passed `global_env` as the env, so closures captured stale globals;
fixed by passing NIL — env_lookup falls back to the CURRENT global_env
via its existing two-pass walk. Multi-run regression added to the
functional test suite.
- fib-ack demo: (ack 3 4) was too heavy for Pyodide (minutes). Cut to
(ack 3 3) + (fib 20) max so every tier finishes in seconds.
Test discipline
- Root `make test-all` now includes `wasm-test`. Adding a language
feature without exercising it on all six implementations is no longer
possible by accident.
- Functional suite: 11 assertions (was 10) — adds asm multi-run stability.
- Integration + unit: still 20 + 8.
Adds a parallel build of all three Lumbda implementations to WASM, a
single-page playground at www/playground/, and a verified test suite.
Tiers
- Python: Pyodide (CPython-in-WASM) hosting lumbda.py
- C: Emscripten build of c/ (tree-walker + bytecode VM; jit.c
stubbed, gc.c uses its existing no-Boehm fallback)
- Asm: hand-written asm/lumbda.wat — parallel impl to asm/lumbda.s.
Reader, eval (lambda/define/if/cond/let/and/or/quote/set!),
recursion across mutated top-level env, bump allocator with
memory.grow, 24 primitives. ~1200 lines of raw WAT.
SPA (wasm/app/, deployed to www/playground/)
- CodeMirror 6 editor (Scheme highlighting) on left, output on right
- Radios: 4 demos (Mandelbrot, Fib+Ack, Sieve, self-interp meta-eval)
x 4 tiers (Python | C | Asm | All three)
- All-three mode renders the three tier outputs side by side with
per-tier elapsed timing
Tests (38 verified assertions)
- 20 unit (Node): per-tier module loads, eval smoke
- 8 integration (Node): each demo on c+asm WASM byte-matches the
canonical native Python run
- 10 functional (Playwright headless Chromium): page mounts, every
demo runs on every tier, all-three renders
Makefile
- Root targets: wasm-build, wasm-test, wasm-test-fn, wasm-serve,
wasm-deploy, wasm-clean
- wasm/Makefile orchestrates the three tier builds; deploy copies
dist/ into www/playground/
Asm tier notes
- WAT linear symbol intern + linear env lookup is MOAD-0001 at scale;
documented in the asm/lumbda.wat header and in the SPA footer. The
demos hit ~30 globals so the linear walks are cheap enough.
- Bump allocator never frees (matches asm/lumbda.s heap discipline);
memory.grow expands by 1 MB chunks. Browser tab tears down at unload.
Toolchain (developer prerequisites)
- Emscripten 6.0.0 via emsdk at ~/git/emsdk
- wabt 1.0.36 at ~/git/wabt
- Playwright for functional tests (symlinked from ~/git/agnt)