Array references in parameter lists were struck through in an edit that had no assertion on its replacement, so it matched nothing and left the entry reading as open. SOUND's frequency sweep was still listed as gapped after landing on akgl_audio_sweep. Both verified by running them before changing the text. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
87 KiB
TODO
Implementation plan for the Go → C port of deps/basicinterpret.
This file is written to be executed by AI agents, not read by humans for inspiration. Every
item names the files it touches, the exact deliverable, and the command that proves it done.
Work the phases in order. Inside a phase, items with no Depends: line may be done in
parallel.
0. Agent protocol
0.1 The Go reference is deprecated. Stop matching it.
deps/basicinterpret is a dead project. It will not be updated, and this interpreter is no
longer required to reproduce its behaviour. Recorded here first because it silently reverses
the premise several sections of this file were written on, and because an agent that reads them
without this will park work that is no longer blocked.
What it changes:
- §6 is now an ordinary defect list. "Port the behaviour first so the port is provably faithful" is retired. Fix them because they are wrong, not when fidelity permits.
- §1.8's message-text contract is now a convention. Improving a message is allowed; it costs a golden file, which is a cost rather than a veto.
- §5's bar drops from "defensible against the golden suite" to defensible on its own merits.
tests/reference/becomes a regression suite rather than a specification. Diverging from it is allowed and must be deliberate and recorded — see its README.
What it does not change:
- The corpus stays and stays green. Forty-one real BASIC programs with known-good output are worth having whatever their provenance, and an unexplained change there is still a red flag.
- The Go source stays readable as documentation. It remains the best answer to "what did the original actually do here", which is a question worth being able to answer even once the answer stops being binding.
- Nothing about the
ak*house rules, which never came from the reference.
Read these before touching anything, in this order:
CLAUDE.mdin this repository — project goals, thelibakerrorconvention, the error-code range map, and the dependency versions.deps/libakerror/AGENTS.md— theATTEMPT/CLEANUP/PROCESS/HANDLE/FINISHprotocol.deps/libakerror/UPGRADING.md— 1.0.0's status registry. Required before writing an error code; the mechanism it replaced is gone.deps/libakstdlib/TODO.md§2.1 — six confirmed defects in the library this port calls into. §1.9 below says which calls are cleared for use; that section is not optional reading, it bans a family of functions the port would otherwise reach for by reflex.deps/libakgl/AGENTS.md— the no-mallocrule and the commit co-author requirement.deps/basicinterpret/README.md— the language reference and the unimplemented list. Still worth reading for the verb set and the semantics; no longer binding, per §0.1.
Rules for working this file:
- Do not mark an item done until its acceptance command passes on a clean out-of-tree build. "It compiles" is not acceptance.
- Do update this file in the same commit as the work: strike the item, or replace it with the defect it uncovered. This file holds outstanding items only.
- Do add the agent program name, model name and version as a commit co-author. That rule
comes from
libakgland applies here. - Never hand-edit generated output.
build/trees and the generatedakerror.hare off-limits; change the generator. - Never reformat a file you are not otherwise changing.
- When a step is blocked because
libakglcannot supply a capability, do not work around it here. File it indeps/libakgl/TODO.mdin the numbered prose style of that file's "Carried over" section and note the block in §7 below.
Style, restated so nobody has to go look: C99, 4-space indent, tabs at width 8
(stroustrup), function-body braces in column 0 on their own line, control braces on the same
line, always brace, spaces inside control-flow parens — if ( x == y ) {. Pointer star
binds to the identifier: char *name. Prefix is akbasic_ for functions,
akbasic_TypeName for types, AKBASIC_UPPER_SNAKE for macros. static helpers drop the
prefix. Parameter names must match between header and source.
1. Design decisions already made
These are settled. Do not relitigate them mid-port; if evidence says one is wrong, say so in a commit that changes it deliberately, and update this section.
1.1 Reflection becomes one aligned dispatch table
The Go runtime resolves verbs with reflect.MethodByName("Command" + NAME)
(basicruntime.go:401), functions with "Function" + NAME, and special parse paths with
"ParseCommand" + NAME (basicparser.go:103). C has no reflection and we are not adding
any. Replace all three with one static table in src/verbs.c, sorted by name, searched
with bsearch(3):
/* name token type parse handler exec handler */
{ "AUTO", AKBASIC_TOK_CMDIMM, NULL, cmd_auto },
{ "DATA", AKBASIC_TOK_COMMAND, parse_data, cmd_data },
{ "DEF", AKBASIC_TOK_COMMAND, parse_def, cmd_def },
A NULL parse handler means "parse the rval as a plain expression", which is exactly what
commandByReflection returning (nil, nil) means today. Adding a verb is adding one row plus
two functions. Keep the table column-aligned and one row per verb — it is a table, so it
gets laid out as one.
This also kills the Go scanner's three separate maps (reservedwords, commands,
functions, basicscanner.go:64-67): the token type lives in the same row.
1.2 Strings are fixed-size and live inline
libakstdlib has no string type. libakgl has akgl_String but it is PATH_MAX bytes,
refcounted, and pool-allocated — wrong shape for a value that gets copied on every
assignment, and it would drag a libakgl dependency into the core interpreter.
Define in include/akbasic/types.h:
#define AKBASIC_MAX_STRING_LENGTH 256 /* matches AKBASIC_MAX_LINE_LENGTH */
and give akbasic_Value a char stringval[AKBASIC_MAX_STRING_LENGTH] inline. clone()
becomes a struct assignment. No allocator, no refcount, no lifetime question.
Tradeoff, stated: every akbasic_Value is ~300 bytes, so one environment's
values[AKBASIC_MAX_VALUES] pool is ~19KB, and 32 environments is ~610KB of BSS. That is
fine on a PC and is the price of never calling malloc. If it ever isn't fine, the knob is
AKBASIC_MAX_STRING_LENGTH, not the allocator.
Truncation is an error, not a silent clamp: FAIL_RETURN(e, AKBASIC_ERR_VALUE, ...).
1.3 Maps become fixed-capacity open-addressed tables
Five Go maps need replacing:
| Go site | Purpose | C replacement |
|---|---|---|
BasicScanner.reservedwords/commands/functions |
keyword → token type | the §1.1 static table + bsearch |
BasicEnvironment.variables |
name → *BasicVariable |
akbasic_SymbolTable, capacity AKBASIC_MAX_VARIABLES |
BasicEnvironment.functions |
name → *BasicFunctionDef |
akbasic_SymbolTable, capacity AKBASIC_MAX_FUNCTIONS |
BasicEnvironment.labels |
name → line number | akbasic_SymbolTable, capacity AKBASIC_MAX_LABELS |
One implementation, src/symtab.c, keyed by aksl_strhash_djb2() (already in
libakstdlib) with linear probing and a fixed slot array. Use the existing hash; do not
write another one. Table full is an error, not a resize.
Caveat, from deps/libakstdlib/TODO.md §1.6/§2.2.6: the wrapper sign-extends char, so a
high-bit byte hashes wrong — "\xff\xfe" returns 5859874 where the unsigned char answer is
5868578. BASIC identifiers are 7-bit ASCII (the scanner only accepts IsLetter/IsDigit plus
a type suffix), so this cannot bite the symbol tables. It would bite if anyone later keys
a table on a string literal or a filename. Do not work around it here; it is already filed
upstream.
1.4 Environments come from a pool and are released
Go calls new(BasicEnvironment) at basicruntime.go:121 and basicparser_commands.go:124
and never frees one. A long-running GOSUB or FOR in Go leaks; the GC eventually catches
some of it, and nothing in the tests notices.
C gets HEAP_ENVIRONMENT[AKBASIC_MAX_ENVIRONMENTS] with
akbasic_env_acquire() / akbasic_env_release(), in the shape of akgl_heap_next_*.
akbasic_runtime_prev_environment() must release the environment it pops. Pool
exhaustion is AKBASIC_ERR_ENVIRONMENT, reported with the current line number.
Watch the one place this is not a clean stack: userFunction (basicruntime.go:348) stores
a BasicEnvironment by value inside BasicFunctionDef and re-init()s it on every call.
In C the funcdef holds an akbasic_Environment * acquired at DEF time and reset per call —
it is owned by the funcdef, not the pool's free list, until the funcdef dies.
1.5 Output goes through a text sink backend
Write() and Println() (basicruntime_graphics.go:140,148) mirror every line to stdout
and to an SDL surface. That mirror is the only reason the golden-file suite works. Do not
reproduce it as a hardcoded pair of calls.
Define a record of function pointers, populated by an initializer — the house pattern:
typedef struct akbasic_TextSink
{
void *self;
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*write)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self, char *text);
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*writeln)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self, char *text);
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*readline)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self, char *dest, size_t len);
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *(*clear)(struct akbasic_TextSink *self);
} akbasic_TextSink;
akbasic_sink_init_stdio() is in the library and akbasic_sink_init_akgl() is in the
akgl-backed module. The driver is supposed to pick: a default build selects stdio, while an
AKBASIC_WITH_AKGL build selects the SDL text path and mirrors its output to stdout. It does
not do that yet; §3 records the missing standalone frontend. Cursor arithmetic, wrapping and
scrolling belong to the akgl sink, not to the interpreter.
1.6 The interpreter steps; it does not run
Go's run() (basicruntime.go:682) is a for {} that owns the process until MODE_QUIT.
Goal 3 forbids that: a host game must be able to bound execution.
The library exposes:
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *akbasic_runtime_step(akbasic_Runtime *obj);
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *akbasic_runtime_run(akbasic_Runtime *obj, int maxsteps);
_step() does exactly what one iteration of Go's for {} body does and returns.
_run(obj, maxsteps) loops _step() until the mode is AKBASIC_MODE_QUIT or maxsteps
steps have elapsed; maxsteps <= 0 means unbounded, which is what the standalone driver
passes. This is a deliberate restructure, and it must not change a single byte of golden
output.
QUIT sets AKBASIC_MODE_QUIT and returns. Nothing in the library calls exit(),
abort(), or FINISH_NORETURN. FINISH_NORETURN appears exactly once in the tree, in
src/main.c.
1.7 Error codes are absolute, reserved from the 1.0.0 registry
deps/libakerror is at 1.0.0. Read deps/libakerror/UPGRADING.md before writing an error
code; CLAUDE.md's error-code section is the condensed version. Three things this changes
from what you may have seen in an older draft or in libakgl:
AKERR_MAX_ERR_VALUEno longer exists. The name registry is sparse and takes anyint. There is nothing for a consumer to size, and no compile definition to set. Anywhere you find one, delete it.__AKERR_ERROR_NAMESno longer exists. The table is private.- Codes are absolute integer constants at 256 or above, never
AKERR_LAST_ERRNO_VALUE + N. The offset scheme is what produced the livelibakglcollision documented inCLAUDE.md.
akbasic owns 512–767 per the range map in CLAUDE.md. Declare it as an enum, so the
values stay compile-time integer constants (HANDLE expands to case labels, which require
that) and adding a code does not mean renumbering an offset:
#define AKBASIC_OWNER "akbasic"
enum {
AKBASIC_ERR_BASE = 512, /** Start of akbasic's reserved status range */
AKBASIC_ERR_SYNTAX = AKBASIC_ERR_BASE,
/** Parse-time grammar violation */
AKBASIC_ERR_TYPE, /** Incompatible types in an operation */
AKBASIC_ERR_UNDEFINED, /** Reference to an undefined verb, function or label */
AKBASIC_ERR_BOUNDS, /** Array subscript or pool index out of range */
AKBASIC_ERR_ENVIRONMENT, /** Environment pool exhausted or orphaned environment */
AKBASIC_ERR_VALUE, /** A value was malformed, truncated or unconvertible */
AKBASIC_ERR_STATE, /** A verb ran outside the block structure it requires */
AKBASIC_ERR_LIMIT = AKBASIC_ERR_BASE + 256
};
akbasic_init() reserves the whole 256 in one call and then names each code. Both
registry calls return akerr_ErrorContext * and are AKERR_NOIGNORE, so a collision is an
ordinary error — PASS it and let it propagate out of init:
akerr_ErrorContext AKERR_NOIGNORE *akbasic_init(void)
{
PREPARE_ERROR(errctx);
PASS(errctx, akerr_reserve_status_range(AKBASIC_ERR_BASE,
AKBASIC_ERR_LIMIT - AKBASIC_ERR_BASE,
AKBASIC_OWNER));
PASS(errctx, akerr_register_status_name(AKBASIC_OWNER, AKBASIC_ERR_SYNTAX,
"Syntax Error"));
/* ... one per code ... */
SUCCEED_RETURN(errctx);
}
Reserve the whole range in one call — a subset or superset of your own range raises
AKERR_STATUS_RANGE_OVERLAP, not a no-op. Use akerr_register_status_name(), never the
two-argument akerr_name_for_status(status, name) set path: the owned form is the one that
catches a component writing into a range that is not its own, and the two-argument form is
what let libakgl silently clobber libakerror's names.
There is no startup ceiling to assert any more — the BSS-overflow hazard the old draft
defended against was deleted along with AKERR_MAX_ERR_VALUE. What replaces it is the
reservation itself: if akbasic_init() returns an error, something else owns part of 512–767
and the process must not continue as though it does not.
Do not call akerr_init() first. Every registry entry point calls it, and since 1.0.0 it no
longer clears reservations made before it ran.
1.8 Error message text is a convention, no longer a contract
tests/language/array_outofbounds.txt is, verbatim:
? 20 : RUNTIME ERROR Variable index access out of bounds at dimension 0: 4 (max 2)\n\n
The trailing double newline is real: basicError builds a string ending in \n and hands it
to Println, which adds another.
This used to be a hard contract and is now a default. The Go implementation is deprecated
and will not be updated, so the two projects are no longer required to match — see §0.1. What
survives is the practical half: these strings and this newline behaviour are what every
expectation in tests/reference/ was written against, so changing one means changing golden
files, and that is worth doing on purpose rather than by accident. A message that reads
awkwardly may now be improved; do it deliberately, move the expectations in the same commit,
and add a line to §5.
Numeric formatting still matches the reference: integers via %" PRId64 ", floats via %f
(Go's %f and C's %f both give six decimals — tests/reference/language/arithmetic/float.txt
confirms). No reason to change it, which is different from not being allowed to.
1.9 Which libakstdlib calls are cleared for use — the bans are lifted
deps/libakstdlib is at 0.2.0, and that release fixed all six of the confirmed defects
this section was built around, plus seventeen contract gaps. The table of bans that used to
live here is gone because it is no longer true, and leaving it would send an agent around a
workaround for a function that now works.
What changed, in the four that mattered to this port:
| Was banned | Now |
|---|---|
aksl_atoi / _atol / _atoll / _atof |
Every one takes a dest pointer and raises AKERR_VALUE on no digits or trailing junk, ERANGE on overflow — exactly the contract this section demanded |
aksl_list_append / _iterate |
Append no longer truncates to two nodes; iterate no longer skips the first half |
aksl_tree_iterate |
AKERR_ITERATOR_BREAK stops the traversal |
aksl_realpath |
Rewritten; no longer reads uninitialised memory on its error path |
Two signature changes reach this repository. aksl_fread and aksl_fwrite now take a
required size_t *nmemb_out and report a short transfer as AKERR_IO instead of a silent
success — so a DSAVE onto a full disk is now an error a program sees, where before it
reported nothing. src/runtime_commands.c passes the count and discards it, which is correct:
the library does the noticing now.
src/convert.c is gone. It existed only because aksl_ato* could not report a conversion
failure, and its own note said what to do when that changed: "When it grows it, delete
src/convert.c and switch the call sites over." That is done. Six call sites now go straight
to the library — newLiteralInt and newLiteralFloat in src/grammar.c, the line number in
src/scanner.c, FunctionVAL in src/runtime_functions.c, INPUT in
src/runtime_commands.c, and GSHAPE's handle in src/runtime_graphics.c.
Three things that fell out of it, recorded because each was checked rather than assumed:
aksl_strtoll(str, NULL, base, &dest)is the exact replacement, notaksl_atoll, wherever a base is involved. Theato*forms are base 10;src/grammar.cpicks base 8 or 16 from the lexeme's prefix. ANULLendptr is what makes trailing junk an error rather than a stopping point, and that is the whole contract this port needs.- The raised status changed from
AKBASIC_ERR_VALUEtoAKERR_VALUE, and the message text with it —VAL("garbage")now saysno digits in "garbage". §1.8 makes message text part of the acceptance contract, so this was checked against the corpus first: no golden file contained a conversion message, which is also why §1.9 used to ask for one. Two now exist,tests/language/numeric/val_refuses_garbageandoctal_literal, so the next change to that text has to move a golden file. tests/convert.cbecametests/numeric_contract.c. The assertions did not become worthless when the wrapper went away — they became assertions about a contract this port depends on and no longer owns, which is worth pinning exactly because a regression in it would makeVAL("garbage")return 0 silently. Same reasoninglibakstdlib's owntests/test_status_registry.cgives for pinning that it reserves no status range.
One caveat survives the upgrade unchanged: aksl_strhash_djb2 still sign-extends char, so a
high-bit byte hashes differently from the unsigned char answer. BASIC identifiers are 7-bit
ASCII so the symbol tables cannot reach it — see §1.3, which is still accurate.
2. What exists — the core port is complete and green
Phases 0 through 6 of the original plan are done. The interpreter builds clean under
-Wall -Wextra, passes the reference's entire corpus, and passes under ASan and UBSan.
It did reproduce the reference byte for byte, and that claim is retired rather than broken:
§0.1 released it, and one case has since diverged deliberately (§6 item 16, listed in
tests/reference/README.md). Everything else still matches, which is worth knowing but is no
longer a gate.
cmake -S . -B build && cmake --build build --parallel
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure # 59/59
cmake -S . -B build-asan -DAKBASIC_SANITIZE=ON # 59/59
cmake -S . -B build-cov -DAKBASIC_COVERAGE=ON # 92.3% line, 96.9% function
| Module | Source | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Symbol table | src/symtab.c |
the five Go maps |
| Value | src/value.c |
basicvalue.go |
| Variable | src/variable.c |
basicvariable.go |
| Tokens and AST leaves | src/grammar.c |
basicgrammar.go + basicparser.go |
| Dispatch table | src/verbs.c |
the three reflection lookups |
| Scanner | src/scanner.c |
basicscanner.go |
| Parser | src/parser.c, src/parser_commands.c |
basicparser*.go |
| Environment | src/environment.c |
basicenvironment.go |
| Runtime | src/runtime.c |
basicruntime.go minus SDL |
| Verbs and functions | src/runtime_commands.c, src/runtime_functions.c |
basicruntime_{commands,functions}.go |
| Text sink | src/sink_stdio.c |
basicruntime_graphics.go's stdout mirror |
| Stdio driver | src/main.c |
main.go minus its SDL frontend |
| Embedding examples | examples/embed.c, examples/hostvars.c |
(new) |
akbasic_runtime_load(rt, source) was added while writing the README's embedding
section: a host usually holds its script as a string and wants the sink reserved for output,
and the only path that existed — AKBASIC_MODE_RUNSTREAM reading through the sink's
readline — forces a game to point its output device at its source text. examples/embed.c
is the code the README quotes, built by every build and registered as a CTest case so a
signature change breaks the build rather than rotting the document.
The acceptance suite is the reference's own corpus, checked in at tests/reference/. All
41 .bas files are registered as individual CTest cases and byte-compared against their .txt
— including the trailing double newline on an error line (§1.8).
It was driven in place out of deps/basicinterpret until 2026-07-31, on the reasoning that
copying a submodule's corpus guarantees drift. That reasoning was sound and was overruled
deliberately: the Go dependency is being deprecated, and a build that cannot run its own
acceptance suite without cloning the implementation it replaced is not finished. The copy is
byte-identical to basicinterpreter@d76162c, and tests/reference/README.md records the
provenance, the cost of the drift nobody is watching for now, and the rule that those
expectations are never edited to suit this interpreter.
Nothing in the build or the suite needs deps/basicinterpret any more, and that is checked
rather than assumed — both configurations were configured, built and run from scratch with the
submodule moved out of the tree. The Commodore font moved too, to assets/fonts/, which was the
other thing tying the build to it; assets/fonts/PROVENANCE.md carries the licence question that
came with it.
Eighteen unit tests cover the modules the corpus cannot reach on its own.
tests/known_reference_defects.c is registered in AKBASIC_KNOWN_FAILING_TESTS and asserts
the correct contract for six of the defects in §6; when one is fixed CTest reports
"unexpectedly passed", which is the cue to split that assertion out and strike the item.
Two budget numbers moved during implementation and are worth knowing:
AKBASIC_MAX_ARRAY_ELEMENTS (1024) caps one array and AKBASIC_MAX_ARRAY_VALUES (4096) caps
all of them together, drawn from an akbasic_ValuePool the runtime owns. The reference had no
such ceiling because it called make().
3. The akgl-backed sink, devices and standalone frontend — done
-DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON builds and its suite passes, and the build option now changes what
the executable does: an AKGL build of basic opens a window, draws BASIC output into it,
pumps SDL events, lets you type at it, and still puts every byte on stdout. Four adaptors in
the akbasic_akgl target, which is the only thing here that links SDL, are complete and
tested:
| File | Backs |
|---|---|
src/sink_akgl.c |
the §1.5 text sink, over akgl_text_measure and akgl_text_rendertextat |
src/graphics_akgl.c |
akbasic_GraphicsBackend, over akgl_draw_*, and the SSHAPE surface pool |
src/audio_akgl.c |
akbasic_AudioBackend, over akgl_audio_* |
src/input_akgl.c |
akbasic_InputBackend, over akgl_controller_poll_key |
The character grid comes from akgl_text_measure(font, "A", &w, &h) — the direct equivalent of
the font.SizeUTF8("A") at basicruntime.go:96, and the call this was blocked on until
42b60f7. Wrapping is done on the character grid rather than by handing SDL_ttf a wraplength,
because the cursor has to land somewhere definite: a program that PRINTs a long string and
then PRINTs again expects the second to start on the row after the first ended, and only the
code that placed the characters knows which row that is.
The interpreter owns no window, renderer or event loop. Every initializer takes something
the host already made. Each calls akgl_error_init() first: akgl_game_init() would have,
but we drive subsystems directly and never call it, and a code raised before that registration
carries no name into its stack trace. It is idempotent.
Acceptance: tests/akgl_backends.c, a 128x128 software renderer under the dummy video
driver read back with SDL_RenderReadPixels — the pattern deps/libakgl/tests/draw.c
established, which needs no display and no offscreen harness. Registered as the akgl_backends
CTest case, and only when AKBASIC_WITH_AKGL is on.
The standalone frontend
The standalone executable is itself a host, and that half of the Go frontend is now ported —
src/frontend_akgl.c, in its own akbasic_frontend target. The separation is in the build
graph and not only in a comment: akbasic is the interpreter, akbasic_akgl is the four
adaptors that draw through somebody else's renderer, and akbasic_frontend is the one thing in
the repository that creates a window. A game embedding the interpreter links the first two and
not the third.
| Piece | Where |
|---|---|
| Window, renderer, font, the four adaptors | akbasic_frontend_akgl_init() |
| Sink and devices onto a runtime | akbasic_frontend_akgl_attach() |
| One frame: pump events, draw the text layer, present | akbasic_frontend_akgl_pump() |
| The bounded frame loop | akbasic_frontend_akgl_drive() |
| stdout mirror | src/sink_tee.c, in the core library |
Four things are worth knowing about how it came out.
-
The stdout mirror is a sink, not a second write. §1.5 made the sink boundary precisely so the interpreter would never carry the reference's hardcoded pair of calls, and §3 item 5 said it again.
akbasic_sink_init_tee()composes two sinks into one and takesreadlinefrom whichever of the two was named as the reader — which is the whole difference between the two modes: a program read from a file comes in through the stdio half, and typed lines come in through the akgl half's line editor. It lives in the core library and is tested there (tests/sink_tee.c), because composing two function-pointer records needs no SDL. -
The line editor borrows the host's loop a frame at a time.
readlinehas to wait for a typed line, and §1.6 forbids the library blocking — and a sink that sat on the keyboard with no way to pump events would deadlock the process on its firstINPUT. So the host installs anakbasic_AkglPumpwithakbasic_sink_akgl_set_pump(), and the editor calls it between keystrokes. The loop is still the host's.akbasic_frontend_akgl_pump()has that exact signature and is installed as-is. Without a pump the sink reports EOF, which is what it did before and what a host that wants no editor still gets. -
The frame loop is bounded, and that is what makes the close button work. 256 steps per frame (
AKBASIC_FRONTEND_STEPS_PER_FRAME), then pump and present.10 GOTO 10under an unboundedrun()would own the process forever;tests/akgl_frontend.cruns exactly that and asserts the window close ends it. -
The frame is not cleared. The graphics verbs draw straight to the renderer rather than into a display list, so clearing would wipe every
DRAWat the end of the frame it was issued in. The text layer is drawn over whatever is there, which is also how a C128 stacks its text plane on its bitmap plane.
Acceptance: two things, and the second one is the stronger.
tests/akgl_frontend.c, registered as theakgl_frontendCTest case: a program run through the frontend under the dummy driver, asserting the mirrored stdout byte for byte and reading the renderer back to prove the same characters were drawn in the Commodore font; synthetic key events pushed into SDL's own queue and read back through the frontend's input backend, so every link the host owns is in the path; the line editor's fold to upper case, its backspace and its escape; a whole REPL session typed at the window and ended with a typedQUIT; and the window-close path.- The entire golden corpus is driven through the AKGL binary. A
-DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ONbuild registers the same 41 upstream cases against the same executable, which now opens a window to run them, and all 41 still match byte for byte. That is a much broader statement than any hand-written frontend test: the SDL path changes no observable output anywhere in the corpus.
Three no_device.bas local cases are deliberately not registered in an AKGL build. Their
premise is a driver that was given no devices, which is true of the stdio driver and
deliberately false of this one. The refusal path they cover is asserted directly against the
backend records in tests/devices.c, which both configurations build.
Manual check against a real display, 2026-07-31. The dummy driver cannot prove presentation,
so build-akgl/basic was run against X display :0 on a program that prints a line, draws a
BOX and then loops. xwininfo found a real 800x600 window titled BASIC; the window was
captured with import and measured: the first text row carries glyph pixels (mean 65/255), the
box's left edge at x=100 is a solid white line (mean 255), the box interior is black — it
outlines rather than fills — and an empty corner is black. stdout carried HELLO WORLD at the
same time. QUIT exits cleanly with status 0.
The typing half is no longer manual, and it is no longer a gap. It used to read "somebody
should type at it once", because no key-synthesis tool was installed. xdotool now is, and
tests/akgl_typing.sh is registered as the akgl_typing CTest case: it starts the driver under
a pty, waits for the window with xdotool search --sync, gives it keyboard focus, types a
program containing a string literal and a lower-case one, and polls the mirrored stdout
for what they print.
That case earns its keep twice over. It is the only test that covers the path upstream of SDL
— X11 → SDL composition → libakgl's ring → the editor — and everything else synthesises SDL
events, which is precisely how the missing SDL_StartTextInput() shipped with a green suite.
Confirmed by reverting both halves of that fix and watching it fail with the same symptom that
was reported: READY, and nothing after it.
It needs a real X server, a window manager and xdotool, and it steals keyboard focus for about
fifteen seconds. Absent any of those it reports CTest Skipped rather than failing, which is
what it does in CI. AKBASIC_SKIP_INTERACTIVE=1 skips it deliberately.
The five things that had to be worked around — all gone
Every one was filed against libakgl and every one is resolved in its 0.3.0. What is left here
is the note that they existed, because the pattern is the point: file it upstream, comment the
workaround at its site with the words "filed upstream", delete it when it lands.
| Was | Resolved by |
|---|---|
An embedded libakgl required its vendored SDL, SDL_image, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf and jansson to be installed, so our CMakeLists.txt declared all five by hand first |
It adds them whether or not it is top-level |
akgl/controller.h did not compile on its own — it used akgl_Actor * and included nothing that declared it |
It includes <akgl/actor.h> |
| There was no way to bind a 2D backend to a renderer you already had, so the six vtable pointers were assigned by hand in two files | akgl_render_bind2d() |
akgl_text_rendertextat() dereferenced an unset draw_texture, so the first PRINT through an unbound backend segfaulted |
It checks, and reports AKERR_NULLPOINTER like the draw entry points |
SOUND's frequency sweep had no equivalent and was refused |
akgl_audio_sweep() |
0.3.0 also arrived with a regression that this repository is the one that found, because it
is the only consumer that embeds libakgl alongside other projects: the commit that made the
vendored dependencies unconditional also made its add_test() shadow unconditional, and CMake
chains command overrides exactly one level deep. Two projects in one tree cannot both shadow
add_test — the second rebinds _add_test to the first and the builtin becomes unreachable to
everybody, so our own registrations recursed to CMake's depth limit. Fixed upstream by putting
the top-level guard back; filed as libakgl defect 27, with the two-line CMake program that
demonstrates the one-level limit.
Still missing from the sink
Nothing that blocks a verb, and as of libakgl 0.3.0 nothing that blocks a character either.
The ring now carries the composed UTF-8 text SDL worked out from each keystroke, so the editor
takes that in preference to the keycode and shifted characters, keyboard layouts, compose keys
and dead keys all work. A double quote can be typed, so a BASIC string literal can be typed,
which was the sharp end of the old limitation — it used to mean a program with a string in it
had to be passed on the command line. Letters are no longer folded to upper case, because there
is no longer any reason to.
The host has to turn text input on, and forgetting to is how this broke once. SDL3 has it
off by default and per-window, so it is akbasic_frontend_akgl_init() that calls
SDL_StartTextInput() — akgl/controller.h says as much. Without it SDL emits no
SDL_EVENT_TEXT_INPUT at all, every keystroke reaches the ring with an empty text, and an
editor that reads that as "not a character" is silently dead: nothing echoes in the window, and
nothing reaches stdout either, because RUN can never be typed.
The editor therefore falls back to the keycode when a keystroke carries no composed text,
folded to upper case. A worse keyboard is a great deal better than no keyboard, and it means a
host that embeds these adaptors and forgets SDL_StartTextInput() gets a usable editor rather
than a dead one. Both halves are asserted in tests/akgl_frontend.c, and both were checked by
reverting each in turn and watching the test fail.
Worth knowing about the test suite that missed this: every other keyboard test pushes
SDL_EVENT_TEXT_INPUT into SDL's queue by hand, which is what a real keyboard produces — once
text input has been started. Synthesising the end of a chain cannot test the beginning of it.
The new test asserts SDL_TextInputActive() directly for that reason, and the whole frontend
suite has been run against a real X11 window as well as the dummy driver.
One limit remains, and it is a choice rather than a gap:
- No cursor movement within a line. Backspace and escape only. The arrow keys stay in the
ring for a script's own
GETloop, which is the more valuable use of them.
A non-ASCII character is accepted by the keyboard and then dropped rather than stored, which is §1.2 rather than the editor: the grid is a byte per cell and a value's string is a fixed 256 bytes, so a multi-byte character has nowhere to go. Dropping it is honest where storing half of it is not.
WINDOW and KEY in group E want a text-window rectangle and a function-key table on top of
this, which is ordinary work here rather than anything blocked.
4. Remaining work: language completion (goal 2)
The work queue is the "What Isn't Implemented" list in deps/basicinterpret/README.md.
Each verb is: table row (§1.1) → parse handler if it needs one → exec handler → unit test →
a new .bas/.txt pair. Both kinds of test; they answer different questions.
Order by what unblocks the most, and by what does not need libakgl to grow first:
| Group | Verbs | Blocked on |
|---|---|---|
| A. Structure | DO, LOOP, WHILE, UNTIL, ON, BEGIN, BEND, END |
nothing — reuses waitingForCommand |
NEW, CLR, CONT, SWAP, TRON, TROFF, HELP |
done — src/runtime_housekeeping.c, tests/housekeeping_verbs.c |
|
| B′. Housekeeping, deferred | RESTORE, RENUMBER |
neither is small; see below |
| C. Errors | TRAP, RESUME, ER, ERR |
needs a BASIC-visible error object |
| D. Strings/format | USING, PUDEF, WIDTH, CHAR |
nothing |
| E. Console | WINDOW, KEY, SLEEP, WAIT, TI |
the sink, or the clock akbasic_runtime_settime() now carries |
| F. Disk | DOPEN, DCLOSE, APPEND, RECORD, HEADER, COLLECT, BACKUP, COPY, CONCAT, RENAME, SCRATCH, DIRECTORY, CATALOG, DCLEAR, DVERIFY, SAVE, LOAD, VERIFY, BLOAD, BSAVE, BOOT |
aksl_f* only; no new akgl |
GRAPHIC, DRAW, BOX, CIRCLE, PAINT, COLOR, SCALE, SSHAPE, GSHAPE, LOCATE |
done — src/runtime_graphics.c, tests/graphics_verbs.c |
|
| H. Sprites | SPRITE, MOVSPR, SPRCOLOR, SPRDEF, SPRSAV, COLLISION |
libakgl sprite/actor API — check before filing |
PLAY, SOUND, ENVELOPE, VOL, TEMPO |
done — src/runtime_audio.c, src/play.c, tests/audio_verbs.c |
|
| I′. Audio, still gapped | FILTER |
libakgl has no filter stage and SDL3 supplies no primitive; refused with AKBASIC_ERR_DEVICE. SOUND's sweep arguments used to be here and landed with akgl_audio_sweep in libakgl 0.3.0 |
GET, GETKEY, SCNCLR |
done — src/runtime_input.c, tests/input_verbs.c |
|
| J. Machine | SYS, FETCH, STASH, POKE/PEEK variants |
nothing |
RESTORE and RENUMBER are deferred, and neither is a small job.
RESTOREneeds a DATA pointer, and there isn't one.READdoes not read: it declares that the nextDATAline reached in execution order should fill its identifiers, and skips forward until one turns up (akbasic_cmd_read, ported faithfully). There is no cursor into a list ofDATAitems, so there is nothing forRESTOREto reset. Implementing it honestly means implementing the pointer, which is worth doing on its own merits, because the current arrangement has a defect the corpus does not catch: aDATAline that appears before itsREADis never found, so10 DATA 1,2/20 READ A#runs off the end of the program in silence, and a secondREADre-reads the same line rather than continuing. The fix is a pre-scan of everyDATAstatement into a flat list plus a read cursor, at which pointRESTORE [line]is three lines. Its own commit, with the golden cases the change would need.RENUMBERhas to rewrite references or it is worse than useless. Moving lines is easy — source is filed under its line number insource[]. Rewriting everyGOTO,GOSUB,THEN,ELSE,RUNandLISTtarget to match is the job, and doing it on source text means distinguishing a line number from a digit inside a string literal. Refusing it is better than aRENUMBERthat silently breaks every branch in the program.
LOCATE used to appear in both E and G. It belongs to G alone: in BASIC 7.0 LOCATE moves the
graphics pixel cursor that DRAW starts from, and the text cursor verb is CHAR, which is
already in group D.
Out of scope, and staying that way — the reference marks these as incompatible with a
modern PC and that reasoning stands: BANK (no bank switching), FAST (irrelevant CPU speed
control), MONITOR (no machine-language monitor).
Also on the queue, from the reference's own defect list:
-
Multiple statements per lineDone.akbasic_parser_parse()consumes a run ofCOLONtokens before each statement and hands the caller a NULL leaf when nothing followed them, which is how an empty statement — a trailing separator, or::— stays legal rather than becoming an error.tests/parser_commands.ccounts statements per line;tests/language/statements/multiple_per_line.basasserts what actually runs.One thing about it needed a decision rather than a transcription, and it is recorded as deviation 31 in §5: BASIC 7.0 scopes everything after
THENto the condition, soIF C THEN A : Bmust run neitherAnorBwhenCis false. The parser takes exactly one statement per arm, so the rest of the line reaches the statement loop as ordinary statements and the branch has to tell the loop whether to run them.A known limitation, not a defect: a whole
FOR/NEXTon one line (FOR I# = 1 TO 3 : PRINT I# : NEXT I#) does not loop. The block structure is the reference'swaitingForCommandmodel (§1.6), which skips forward by source line to the verb it is waiting for, so aNEXTon the same line as itsFORis never reached. Fixing it means restructuring control flow to work on statements rather than lines, which is a deliberate piece of work and wants its own commit. Group A'sDO/LOOPwill meet the same wall. -
Array references in parameter listsDone, and it turned out to be §6 item 13 a third time rather than a separate defect. An identifier's subscript list moved to.expr, andakbasic_ASTLeafgrew anextfield so an argument list chains through a link of its own. That last part is the real fix: the reference chains arguments through each argument's own.right, and every leaf type that can be an argument already uses.rightfor something, so moving one operand out of the way only shifted the collision along. Covered bytests/language/arrays_in_parameter_lists.basandtests/runtime_evaluate.c.
5. Deliberate deviations from the reference
Keep this list current. Most of these change structure without changing observable output; the ones that do change output say so and carry the golden file they moved.
The bar has dropped since this list was started. It used to be "defensible against the golden suite", because matching the Go implementation byte for byte was goal 1's headline claim. That implementation is now deprecated (§0.1), so the bar is the ordinary one: defensible on its own merits, recorded here, and tested.
- Reflection → static dispatch table (§1.1).
- Go maps → fixed open-addressed tables (§1.3).
- Unbounded
new(BasicEnvironment)→ pool with release (§1.4). - Hardcoded stdout+SDL mirror → text sink backend (§1.5).
run()owns the process →step()/ boundedrun()(§1.6).panic()→FAIL_RETURN; no library call terminates the process (§1.6).debug.PrintStack()on parse error → theakerrstack trace only (§3.1 of the original plan).BasicEnvironment.eval_clone_identifiersdeleted as dead state (§4.2 of the original plan).BasicValue.nameandBasicEnvironment.update()deleted as dead: nothing ever writes the field a non-empty string, andupdate()— its only reader — has no callers.- The
DEF-statement bootstrap is gone. The reference declares every builtin by running a BASIC program ofDEFlines through the interpreter at startup and then nulling out the expressions (basicruntime_functions.go:14); here a builtin's name, arity and handler are a row in the dispatch table, andMOD,SPCandSTRare ordinary native handlers. This removes the need to run the interpreter before the interpreter is ready. - Undefined behaviour the reference reaches by a defined route is refused rather than inherited: a shift count outside 0..63, a negative string multiplier, and integer division by zero all raise. Go defines all three (or panics); C does not. No golden case exercises any of them, so observable behaviour is unchanged.
CommandEXITclears the pendingNEXTwait before popping. The reference does not, which leaves the parent waiting for aNEXTthat never arrives (§6 item 8) — in C that is a hang rather than a misbehaviour, and no golden case depends on it.
Deviations in the verbs the reference never implemented
Items 1–12 above are deviations from ported code. These are deviations from Commodore BASIC 7.0, in verbs the reference lists as unimplemented and which therefore had no Go behaviour to port. They matter to somebody typing in a listing out of a C128 manual.
-
Hardware verbs reach a device through a backend record, and refuse when there is none.
akbasic_GraphicsBackend,_AudioBackendand_InputBackendare records of function pointers on the runtime; all three may beNULL, which is what the current stdio-only standalone driver gives them. That is correct for a default build and unfinished for anAKBASIC_WITH_AKGLbuild; see §3. A verb that needs a device it was not given raisesAKBASIC_ERR_DEVICEnaming itself.COLOR,LOCATE,SCALE,ENVELOPE,TEMPOandVOLdeliberately do not require one — they change interpreter state, so a program can configure itself before the host lends it a renderer. -
CIRCLEis a polygon, always. BASIC 7.0'sCIRCLEtakes two radii, a start and end angle, a rotation and a degree increment, which makes it an inc-degree polygon by definition.akgl_draw_circleexists and is deliberately not used: it draws one radius, full sweep, unrotated, so it could serve only the case where every optional argument is defaulted — and a shape that changed character depending on whether the two radii happened to be equal is worse than one that is uniformly a polygon. -
SSHAPEstores a handle in the string, not the pixels. A real C128 packs the region's bitmap into the string variable. Here a value's string is a fixed 256 bytes (§1.2) and a saved region is a device surface, so the variable getsSHAPE:<n>and the surface stays in a fixed pool on the backend.GSHAPEaccepts only a string carrying that prefix, so a hand-written one is refused rather than pasting an unrelated slot. What this costs: a shape cannot be written to disk, cannot be concatenated, andLENof it is not its size. Nothing in BASIC does any of those to a shape string except a program deliberately poking at it. -
BOXfills on a negative angle rather than on a seventh argument. 7.0's last argument selects outline or fill and sits after the rotation, which would make a filled box a seven-argument call. That is filed rather than implemented; today a rotation of zero outlines through the renderer's rectangle and any other rotation draws four lines. -
GRAPHICrecords its mode but honours only one consequence of it. 7.0's five modes differ in bitmap resolution and in whether the bottom of the screen stays text. Neither means anything against a host's renderer, whose size the interpreter does not know and does not own. The mode is stored, an out-of-range one is refused because that is a typo worth catching, and the one observable rule is that mode 0 is text. -
Coordinates reaching a backend are BASIC's 320x200 space, and scaling to the window is the host's job. The interpreter cannot ask the renderer how big it is without owning it.
SCALEmaps user coordinates onto that space; withSCALEoff they pass through. -
PLAYdoes not block. On a C128PLAYholds the program until the last note ends. §1.6 forbids that outright, soPLAYparses the string into a fixed queue and returns;akbasic_runtime_step()releases one note at a time against whatever time the host last passed toakbasic_runtime_settime(). What this changes for a program: the statement after aPLAYruns immediately rather than a bar later, so a listing that relied onPLAYfor timing will race ahead. A program that wants to wait should test the queue rather than assume the verb waits for it. -
The host owns the clock, and an unset clock rushes the music. The library reads no clock — it owns no loop and must not block. A host calls
akbasic_runtime_settime()once a frame; the standalone driver calls it every step offCLOCK_MONOTONIC. Left unset it reads zero forever, so every duration has already expired and the queue drains as fast asstep()is called. Audible, deterministic, and never a hang, which is the right way for that to fail. -
PLAY'sM(measure) is a no-op, andSOUND's sweep runs once rather than oscillating.Msynchronises the three voices on a C128; with one sequential queue there is nothing to synchronise, and a listing full of them should still play, so it is accepted and ignored.The sweep used to be refused outright — there was no
akgl_audio_*equivalent and faking one would have tied audible pitch to how often the host calls us.libakgl0.3.0 addedakgl_audio_sweep()andSOUND voice, freq, dur, dir, min, stepnow reaches it. What does not survive isdir3, "oscillate":akgl_audio_sweepruns one pass between two endpoints, and a real oscillation needs the mixer to turn around at them. What this changes for a program: adir3 siren rises or falls once instead of warbling.dir1 and 2 are exact, and so is the direction — both the SID andakgl_audio_sweeptake it from which endpoint is higher, so aminabove the starting frequency rises whateverdirsays.stepis converted as a delta rather than a position: it is a register increment, and the register-to-hertz table maps positions, so it goes across as the distance between register 0 and registerstep. A step that converts to zero would never arrive and is raised to one hertz, which is the smallest move that still gets there.A backend whose record has no
sweep— a host written againstlibakgl0.2.0 — still refuses a swept note withAKBASIC_ERR_DEVICEand plays a held one normally.tests/audio_verbs.casserts both halves. -
TEMPO's constant is a calibration choice, not a transcription. BASIC 7.0 documentsTEMPOas a relative duration from 1 to 255 defaulting to 8, and does not publish what a whole note actually lasts.src/audio_tables.cuses 16000 ms atTEMPO1, which puts a default-tempo quarter note at 500 ms — 120 beats per minute. If the real constant turns up, that is the one line to change. -
GETKEYholds the step loop rather than blocking. A C128 sits on the keyboard insideGETKEYuntil somebody types. §1.6 forbids the library blocking, so the verb sets a flag andakbasic_runtime_step()declines to advance the program until a key arrives. Every step still returns and a boundedakbasic_runtime_run()still comes back, so a host keeps its frame rate; the program simply does not move past theGETKEY, which is the part a program author cares about. ThePLAYqueue is serviced before this check on purpose — music should keep playing while a program waits for a keypress. Withdrawing the input device while aGETKEYis holding releases it rather than wedging the script forever. -
GETandGETKEYinto a numeric variable yield the key code. BASIC 7.0'sGETtakes a string variable. Accepting an integer one as well, and giving it the raw code, is what a program testing for cursor or function keys needs and costs nothing. No key is code zero, matching what a C128 reports. A float variable is refused: it is neither a character nor a code.
Deviations in the standalone frontend
Items 1–12 are deviations from ported interpreter code and 13–24 from BASIC 7.0. These four are
deviations from the reference's program: main.go and the SDL half of
basicruntime_graphics.go.
-
The frame loop is bounded and the reference's is not. Go's
run()is afor {}that owns the process untilMODE_QUIT(basicruntime.go:682), which is why the reference's window never answers its close button. Here the driver runsAKBASIC_FRONTEND_STEPS_PER_FRAMEsteps, pumps, presents, and goes round again. What this changes for a program: nothing observable — a bounded run reproduces an unbounded one exactly, and the whole golden corpus is driven through this loop to prove it. What it changes for a user is that the window closes when asked. -
The text layer repaints every row it owns, every frame. Not just the rows that changed.
That was tried — a
drawn[]array marking which rows had carried glyphs, so an untouched row could be skipped — and it is wrong on real hardware.SDL_RenderPresentswaps buffers, so a frame does not inherit the frame before it; it inherits the one two back, and on some backends something undefined. A row erased once is clean in one buffer and still dirty in the other, and presenting alternates between them.That is what a backspace across a line wrap looked like: the first character of the wrapped tail flickering in and out forever after the rest had gone. It reproduces on X11 and never under the dummy driver or a software renderer, which is exactly why the suite was green through two rounds of fixing it.
tests/akgl_frontend.cnow paints stale pixels by hand — which is what a swapped-in buffer hands back — so the case is covered without needing real hardware.There is no cheaper correct answer available: a frame either owns every pixel it presents or it inherits pixels it cannot reason about.
What this costs, and it is more than it used to. The host still does not call
SDL_RenderClear, but the text area is now repainted in full every frame, so anything a graphics verb drew underneath it is erased every frame rather than only where text lands. In the standalone driver the text area is the whole window, soDRAWandPRINTno longer coexist there.And the same buffer swap means the graphics verbs were never reliable across frames anyway, which is worth stating plainly rather than leaving as a surprise: a one-shot
DRAWlands in one buffer and the next present shows the other. It looked fine in a single screenshot and would have flickered exactly as the text did. Making graphics survive needs a persistent surface the frame is composited from, which is real work and its own commit — filed here rather than half-done. -
The cursor is a blinking block. The reference draws an underscore glyph (
drawCursor,basicruntime_graphics.go:33), and so did this until the underscore turned out to sit under the text being typed and make it hard to read. A block occupies the cell after the text instead of the space beneath it.Half a second per blink (
AKBASIC_SINK_CURSOR_BLINK_MS), which is about a Commodore's and slow enough to read under.akbasic_AkglSink.cursorperiodmsset to zero holds it solid, which is what makes a frame deterministic for a test.Two details that are decisions rather than accidents. The clock is SDL's, not the host's: everywhere else the host owns the clock because the library owns no loop and must not block, but this is an adaptor that already links SDL and threading a timestamp through the sink interface to animate a cursor would be a poor trade. And a line that exactly fills a row leaves the cursor one column past the end, because
putchar_atwraps only when the next character arrives — the cursor is drawn at the start of the next row instead, which is where the next character will actually land and where a C128 puts it. -
The window is closed by the host, and that is not
QUIT. Closing the window stops the frontend and leavesobj->modealone; it does not setAKBASIC_MODE_QUIT. The distinction is invisible to the standalone program, which exits either way, and load-bearing for an embedding host: a game that closes its own window has not decided that the script is finished, and a script that ranQUIThas.tests/akgl_frontend.casserts both halves. -
Piped input still works in an AKGL build. With a terminal on stdin the window is the console and lines come from its editor; piped or redirected, they come from the pipe. This is not in the reference, which always reads
os.Stdinin REPL mode. It exists sobasic < program.basbehaves the same in both builds — and so the golden corpus can be driven through the SDL binary, which is where most of the frontend's real coverage comes from.
Deviations that change what a program is allowed to do
-
A verb name with a type suffix is not a variable name.
PRINT$ = 1is refused where the reference accepts it, because its reserved-word check searched the keyword tables with the suffix still attached and therefore never matched (§6 item 16). A real C128 refuses it too, so this is the reference being wrong rather than this interpreter being strict.What it costs a program: a listing that used
INPUT$,LEN#orGOTO%as a variable stops parsing, and the fix is to rename the variable. One case in the reference's own corpus did exactly that; seetests/reference/README.md.
Deviations in statement separation
-
A branch decides who owns the rest of its line. BASIC 7.0 scopes every statement after
THENto the condition, and the reference has no opinion on the matter because it never consumed theCOLONtoken at all. The parser here takes exactly one statement for each arm, so the rest of the line arrives at the statement loop as ordinary top-level statements and something has to say whether to run them. TheBRANCHcase inakbasic_runtime_evaluate()setsruntime->skiprestofline, and the two statement loops stop on it.The rule is not "skip when false", which is the reason this is written down:
Line Condition What runs IF C THEN A : Btrue A,BIF C THEN A : Bfalse nothing IF C THEN A ELSE B : Dtrue AIF C THEN A ELSE B : Dfalse B,DThe remainder always belongs to whichever arm was written last, so it is skipped exactly when that arm is the one not taken — with an
ELSEthe last arm isELSE, without one it isTHEN. That is one line of code and it reads as an oddity without the table above it.
6. Reference defects — fix them; fidelity is no longer a reason not to
These are real bugs in deps/basicinterpret, reproduced faithfully during the port.
The rule that governed this section is gone. It used to read "port the behaviour first so the golden suite passes and the port is provably faithful, then fix each one deliberately" — and faithfulness was the reason several of these are still here. The Go implementation is deprecated and will not be updated (§0.1), so there is no longer anything to be faithful to. Each of these is now an ordinary defect, to be judged on whether the fix is right rather than on whether it matches.
What has not changed is the working method: one fix per commit, with a test that asserts the
correct contract, and a golden file moved in the same commit if the fix changes output.
AKBASIC_KNOWN_FAILING_TESTS is empty now and is kept declared for the next defect that has to
be reproduced before it can be fixed.
basicvariable.go:176—toString()testslen(self.values) == 0and then indexesself.values[0]. Inverted condition; on an empty variable it panics, and on a non-empty one it returns the "not implemented for arrays" string. Consequence:PRINTof a scalar through this path is wrong. Fix:if ( count == 1 ).basicvariable.go:108—setBooleanbuilds a value withvaluetype: TYPE_STRING. Consequence: a boolean stored in a variable reads back as a string with an emptystringval. Fix:TYPE_BOOLEAN.basicenvironment.go:157—stopWaiting(command)ignorescommandand clears the wait unconditionally. Consequence: an inner block can clear an outer block's wait. Fix: compare before clearing, and error on a mismatch.basicvalue.go:181—mathPlusmutatesselfin place whenself.mutableis true, while every other operator always clones. Consequence:A# + 1can modifyA#depending on where the value came from. This one is high blast radius; it interacts witheval_clone_identifiersand withCommandNEXT's increment (basicruntime_commands.go:663), which relies on the mutation. Do not fix it beforeFOR/NEXThas full test coverage.basicvalue.go:191and siblings — every binary operator adds both of the right-hand operand's numeric fields:rval.intval + int64(rval.floatval). Works only because the unused field is always zero. Consequence: none today; it is a landmine for any future value that carries both.basicvalue.go, all comparisons —destis cloned fromself, so the resulting boolean inheritsself.name. Consequence: a comparison result can be written back to the wrong variable throughenvironment.update().basicruntime_commands.go:484—CommandIFwalksexpr.rightto the end of the chain looking for aTHENcommand, then dereferencesexpr.rightafter the loop guaranteed it isnil. Consequence: the "Malformed IF statement" check is unreachable and nestedIF ... THEN ... ELSEis unverified.basicruntime_commands.go:669—CommandEXITpops the environment withoutstopWaiting, leaving the parent waiting on aNEXTthat will never come.basicruntime.go:149—newVariable()andBasicRuntime.variables[MAX_VARIABLES]are dead; variables live in the environment's map. Do not port them.Fixed. Base 10 unless prefixedbasicgrammar.go:224—newLiteralIntselects base 8 whenever the lexeme starts with0.0x; a leading zero in a listing is padding, not a radix.PRINT 010prints 10 andPRINT 08parses. Nothing in the upstream corpus had a leading-zero literal, which is why nothing there noticed. Regression tests intests/grammar_leaves.candtests/language/numeric/octal_literal.bas, which was rewritten from pinning the defect to pinning the fix.basicruntime.go:121/basicparser_commands.go:124— environments are never freed. Addressed structurally by §1.4; no separate fix needed, but the C pool will exhaust where Go merely leaked, sotests/environment_scope.c's exhaustion assertion matters.
Found during the port
Five more, none of which the reference's own corpus catches. Four are now fixed, each with a regression test in the suite that pinned it; the fifth is described below and is not a coding question.
-
Fixed.basicparser.go:329—subtraction()returns after one operator whereaddition()loops.1 - 2 - 3computed1 - 2and abandoned the rest of the line; the remaining- 3was left in the token stream, picked up by the statement loop as a second statement, evaluated and discarded. A wrong answer, silently, which made this the highest-impact item on the list.exponent()has the identical shape — aforloop with areturninside it, in both the reference and the port — so2 ^ 3 ^ 2had it too. Both now fold left, which is what a C128 does with a run of same-precedence operators. Regression tests intests/parser_expressions.c.Worth recording for whoever reads the reference next:
exponent()there isfor self.match(CARAT) { ... return expr, nil }(basicparser.go:519-539), so the loop is a loop in shape only.subtraction()is the same at:357-377. Neither is a transcription slip in the port. -
Fixed, and the fix is structural rather than a smarter counter. The counter walkedbasicparser.go:565— a unary-minus argument inflates a function's arity count..right, which is where a unary leaf keeps its operand and where an argument list chains its arguments; the two meanings were indistinguishable, soABS(-9)counted as two arguments and was refused with "function ABS takes 1 arguments, received 2". No builtin could be called with a negative literal at all. The corpus hid it —sgn.basassigns-1to a variable first.A unary leaf's operand now hangs off
.left. A unary leaf had no other use for that field, so the two meanings separate for the cost of one nobody was using — and counting then needs no special case at all. That also fixes the half of the defect the original entry did not mention: chaining the next argument through.rightoverwrote the operand, soMOD(-7, 3)destroyed its own first argument. Three readers moved (src/runtime.c,src/grammar.c's renderer,src/runtime_commands.c'sLISTrange parser) and that is the whole change. Regression tests intests/runtime_evaluate.c, both halves.The same collision remains for array subscripts, which is why §4 still lists "array references in parameter lists" as outstanding: an identifier keeps its subscript list on
.righttoo. The same move — onto.left— is very likely the fix, and it is not made here because it wants its own commit and its own tests. -
Fixed. A comparison operator in the final column was silently dropped:basicscanner.go:272—matchNextCharreturns without setting a token type when it cannot peek past the end of the line.A# =produced one token, not two, and the parse error that followed pointed somewhere else entirely.falsetypeis now set before returning on the peek failure. Regression tests intests/scanner_tokens.c, for=,<and>. -
Fixed.basicscanner.go:318— hex literals do not survive the scanner.matchNumberletxthrough but not the hex digits after it, so0xfflexed as0xfollowed by an identifierff, the base-16 branch innewLiteralIntwas unreachable, and the README's hex support did not exist. Once thexis seen the run continues over hex digits. Accepted anywhere in a number run rather than only after a leading0, which is the reference's rule and is worth keeping: it is what makes1x2one malformed token that the line-number conversion diagnoses by name. Regression tests intests/scanner_tokens.candtests/language/numeric/octal_literal.bas. -
Fixed, and it is the item §0.1 unblocked. The keyword tables are now searched on the base name with any type suffix stripped, sobasicscanner.go:349— the "Reserved word in variable name" check never fires.PRINT$,LEN#andGOTO%are refused as variable names and the reference's own diagnostic stops being dead code. A name that merely contains a verb —PRINTER$— is still fine, which is what says the check compares the whole base name rather than a prefix. Regression tests intests/scanner_tokens.c.It cost one golden case, exactly as predicted, and the cost turned out to be nothing. The reference's
examples/strreverse.basnames a variableINPUT$; the variable is renamed toSOURCE$intests/reference/, the expectation is byte-for-byte unchanged — the program still printsREVERSED: OLLEH— and the case keeps every bit of its coverage. Recorded intests/reference/README.md's divergence table, which this is the first entry in.This item sat parked because the corpus was the acceptance contract and lived in a submodule this repository could not edit. Both premises are gone: the corpus is checked in, and matching the Go implementation is no longer a goal. Worth keeping the history, because it is a clean example of a fix that was correct all along and blocked entirely by a constraint that has since expired.
Ours, not the reference's
-
A host cannot reliably create a script variable while a script is suspended.Fixed.akbasic_runtime_global(obj, name, dest)walksobj->environmentto the root and finds or creates there unconditionally.README.mdandexamples/hostvars.cboth point at it now, andtests/hostvars.casserts it: a global created from inside aFORbody and from inside aGOSUB, still readable by the script after the body pops, plus the seed-before / read-after path that always worked.This one was not inherited — it fell out of §1.4's environment pool meeting §1.6's bounded
run(), a combination the reference never had because itsrun()never returned. Both failure modes were silent: a variable created throughakbasic_environment_get()landed in the loop's scope and died with it, so the script read it correctly inside the loop and got0immediately after; and reaching for the root explicitly returnedNULLthroughdestwithout raising, because that function only auto-creates whenobj->runtime->environment == obj.Three things settled while doing it, each worth keeping:
- The design question §6 named has an answer. Suspended inside a user function's
scope, the root is still right and the walk still gets there: a funcdef's environment is
initialized with the caller's as its parent (
akbasic_runtime_user_function), so the chain terminates at the same root as any other. akbasic_environment_create()is the new half, and it searches only the scope it is given — no walk in either direction. Walking up would find an outer variable and put the value somewhere other than where the caller asked for it.akbasic_environment_get()is unchanged. Declining to create in a non-active scope is the right behaviour for what the interpreter uses it for; it is only wrong as a host API, which is why the answer was a new entry point rather than a change to that one.tests/hostvars.casserts the old behaviour too, so a later "tidy-up" has to argue with a test.
- The design question §6 named has an answer. Suspended inside a user function's
scope, the root is still right and the walk still gets there: a funcdef's environment is
initialized with the caller's as its parent (
7. Filing gaps against libakgl
When phase 7 or phase 8 needs something libakgl does not have, stop and file it in
deps/libakgl/TODO.md in that file's numbered prose style: what the BASIC verb requires, what
the akgl_* entry point should look like, and what tests would cover it. Growing libakgl to
serve the interpreter is a wanted outcome, not a detour.
All ten gaps filed so far are closed upstream, as of libakgl 0.3.0. Nothing here is
blocked on libakgl, and this repository carries no libakgl workarounds at all — the four
§3 used to list are deleted.
| Was blocking | Closed by |
|---|---|
| Text measurement (§3, the akgl sink) | akgl_text_measure, akgl_text_measure_wrapped |
| Immediate-mode drawing (§4 group G) | akgl_draw_point/_line/_rect/_filled_rect/_circle/_flood_fill/_copy_region/_paste_region |
| Audio (§4 group I) | akgl_audio_init/_tone/_envelope/_waveform/_volume/_stop/_voice_active/_mix |
| Console input (§4 group E) | akgl_controller_poll_key, akgl_controller_flush_keys |
| Vendored dependencies when embedded | added unconditionally, 0.3.0 |
controller.h not self-contained |
includes <akgl/actor.h>, 0.3.0 |
| Binding a 2D backend to an existing renderer | akgl_render_bind2d(), 0.3.0 |
akgl_text_rendertextat() on an unbound backend |
checked, 0.3.0 |
SOUND's frequency sweep (§5 item 21) |
akgl_audio_sweep(), 0.3.0 |
| The line editor could not see Shift (§3) | akgl_Keystroke + akgl_controller_poll_keystroke(), 0.3.0 |
Three notes for whoever files the next one. The draw calls take an akgl_RenderBackend * as
their first argument rather than reaching for a global renderer, which fits the rule that the
interpreter draws through whatever renderer the host already initialized. The audio API is a
synthesised-voice one — akgl_audio_tone(voice, hz, ms) with a separate ADSR envelope — which
is the shape PLAY and ENVELOPE need, rather than the sample playback SDL3_mixer would have
given. And akgl_controller_poll_key() survives alongside the keystroke form on purpose: GET
and GETKEY still use it, because a script asking "was the up arrow pressed" wants a keycode
and would get the empty string from the other one.
FILTER is the one verb still refused, and it is not filed as a gap because upstream said
plainly what it would take: akgl_audio_* synthesises raw waveforms and mixes them, there is no
filter stage to configure, and SDL3 supplies no primitive to build one from. Until an
akgl_audio_filter() exists, FILTER is accepted by the parser and refused at execution with
AKBASIC_ERR_DEVICE rather than silently ignored — a program that asks for a low-pass and gets
an unfiltered square wave has been lied to.
One thing went the other way, and it is worth recording because it is the only defect this
project has ever sent upstream in a release it also consumed. 0.3.0's vendored-dependency fix
also made libakgl's add_test() shadow unconditional. CMake chains command overrides exactly
one level deep, so two projects in one tree cannot both shadow it: the second rebinds
_add_test to the first and the builtin becomes unreachable to everyone, and this repository's
own test registrations recursed until CMake stopped at depth 1000. akbasic is the only
consumer that embeds libakgl next to other projects, so it is the only place this could show
up. Fixed upstream by restoring the top-level guard and filed as libakgl defect 27.
Building against any of it needs -DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON, which pulls in libakgl's own
submodules (SDL and friends). Those are not initialized in a default clone; git submodule update --init --recursive gets them.
8. Status
The port is done. The C interpreter passes the Go reference's entire corpus and passes clean
under ASan and UBSan. It reproduced that corpus byte for byte until §0.1 retired the
requirement; exactly one case has diverged on purpose since, and
tests/reference/README.md lists it.
| Gate | Result |
|---|---|
ctest |
77/77 — 41 reference golden cases, 9 local ones, 25 unit tests, 2 embedding examples. No known-failing tests: the list is empty |
ctest with -DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON |
77/77 on a machine with a display; 76 passed + 1 skipped headless. The same set minus the three no_device cases the SDL driver contradicts, plus akgl_backends, akgl_frontend and akgl_typing — the last of which is the skip, and the akgl_build CI job is where it skips |
| Golden corpus | 41/41 byte-exact from tests/reference/ — and 41/41 again through the SDL binary, which is most of what proves the frontend changes no output |
| ASan + UBSan | 77/77 |
| Line coverage | 94.6% (3857/4076) — above the 90% gate |
| Function coverage | 98.6% (287/291) |
| Warnings | none under -Wall -Wextra |
doxygen Doxyfile |
clean |
Mutation (src/symtab.c) |
74.1%, against a gate of 65 — see .gitea/workflows/ci.yaml |
Coverage of the verb groups added for goal 2, since they are the new surface: src/audio_tables.c
and src/graphics_tables.c 100%, src/runtime_input.c 100%, src/runtime_graphics.c and
src/runtime_audio.c 98%, src/play.c 87%. The akbasic_akgl target is not in the coverage
figure — it is not built in a default configuration.
A note on reading that number, because it was misread once while producing it. A stale
build-cov/ left in the source directory from an earlier session was silently folded into the
report by gcovr --root ., which produced the previous run's 92.3% for a tree that had grown
by 800 lines. The number above was produced from a coverage tree outside the source directory
entirely, after a find . -name '*.gcda' came back empty. That is libakgl defect #13 happening here rather than there, and build*/ being
gitignored is exactly what makes it invisible. Keep build trees out of the source directory,
and if a coverage number looks suspiciously unchanged, find . -name '*.gcda' before believing
it.
Branch coverage reads 18.0% and is not a target, for the reason libakgl/TODO.md and
libakstdlib/TODO.md both give: the akerror control-flow macros expand into large branch trees
at every call site, most of them unreachable in normal operation. Track line and function
coverage.
Dependency baseline:
| Submodule | Version | Notes |
|---|---|---|
deps/libakerror |
1.0.0 | Private ownership-enforced status registry. akbasic reserves 512–767 in akbasic_error_register(). Does not namespace its coverage target when embedded — worked around in our CMakeLists.txt. |
deps/libakstdlib |
0.2.0 | soname libakstdlib.so.0.2. AKSL_VERSION_CHECK() asserted in tests/version_check.c. This release fixed all six confirmed defects the port was working around — see §1.9, where the bans are now lifted. |
deps/libakgl |
0.3.0 | soname libakgl.so.0.3. Owns status codes 256–260. Linked and tested under -DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON, which still defaults OFF so the core library and its whole suite build on a machine with no SDL. 0.3.0 closed every API gap this port had filed — see §7 — so the four workarounds §3 used to list are gone. |
The libakgl requirement used to be pinned by commit, and no longer is. 42b60f7 added 22
public symbols across four headers and left project(akgl VERSION 0.1.0) and the
libakgl.so.0.1 soname unchanged, so nothing here could feature-test for the new API and the
submodule pointer was the only thing expressing the requirement. That was filed upstream as
libakgl defect #14 and fixed by its commit 1066ac7 — the two crossed rather than one
following the other. libakgl is 0.2.0 with an libakgl.so.0.2 soname, so
AKGL_VERSION_AT_LEAST(0, 2, 0) now means something and an ABI mismatch is refused at load
time. Kept here because the reason is the reusable part: an additive release under an
unchanged soname costs its consumers the ability to detect it at all.
CI is split in two. .gitea/workflows/ci.yaml runs on push -- the suite, ASan+UBSan, coverage
and a two-file mutation run -- and .gitea/workflows/release.yaml is manual
(workflow_dispatch), carrying the doxygen gate and the whole-tree mutation run. The split is
about cost: the full mutation set is 3675 mutants and hours of runner time, which is a release
gate rather than a per-commit one, and the docs are wanted at release time. Three notes worth
keeping:
-
The checkout is
submodules: true, notrecursive. The build needslibakerror,libakstdlibandbasicinterpret; it does not needlibakgl, which is guarded behindAKBASIC_WITH_AKGLand defaults OFF — and recursing into it would clone SDL, SDL_image, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf and jansson for a target that is never configured. Thedocsjob needs no submodules at all. -
The push-path
mutation_testjob is bounded tosrc/symtab.c, scoring 74.1% against a gate of 65. It was two files untilsrc/convert.cwas deleted.src/audio_tables.cwas measured as a replacement and scored 64.7%, below the gate — a real gap rather than a reason to skip the file: almost every survivor is inakbasic_audio_state_init, where nothing asserts that a freshly initialised audio state is actually zeroed and defaulted. That is the same gap this job's history records closing forsrc/symtab.c, and closing it is what earns the file its place back in CI.Worth knowing before reading a score: the harness's
ICRoperator only rewrites the constants0and1, so a lookup table of other values produces no mutants at all and a high score over one says nothing about whether its entries are right.tests/audio_verbs.casserts all 32 ADSR entries anyway — that catches a hand-edit typo, which is the real failure mode, but it did not and could not move the mutation number.src/value.cis the file most worth mutating and is deliberately not on that path: 368 mutants at roughly 11 seconds each is about 70 minutes, because almost everything links against it. It is covered byrelease.yaml, or locally withcmake --build build --target mutation. -
release.yaml's threshold defaults to 65, the same as the push path, rather than something stricter. Only two files have ever been measured; a tighter whole-tree number would be a guess until a full run establishes a baseline. Raise it through the workflow input once one has.
What remains, in priority order:
-
The standalone AKGL frontend in §3.Done —src/frontend_akgl.cin its ownakbasic_frontendtarget,src/sink_tee.cfor the stdout mirror, andtests/akgl_frontend.c. The build option now changes what the executable does. The one thing not machine-verified is typing at a real focused window; §3 records why and what was verified instead. -
A line editor for the akgl sink.Done —readlineinsrc/sink_akgl.c, over the keystroke ring, borrowing frames from the host through anakbasic_AkglPump. It cannot type a shifted character, which islibakglitem 10 rather than work outstanding here. -
§4 — the language completion work queue, and it is the only substantial thing left. Done: groups G and I, the
GET/GETKEY/SCNCLRpart of E, group B, multiple statements per line, and array references in parameter lists. Left: groups A, D, F and J, plusRESTOREandRENUMBERout of B and the sprite group H. None needs anything fromlibakglexcept H.Two pieces of structural work come before the verbs, and both were found rather than guessed. Neither is a verb and neither can be skipped by the group that needs it:
- Block skipping works by source line, and group A needs it to work by statement.
waitingForCommandskips forward to a verb one line at a time, so a whole loop written on one line —FOR I# = 1 TO 3 : PRINT I# : NEXT I#— never reaches itsNEXT. That is inherited structure rather than a slip, and it did not matter until a line could hold more than one statement.DO/LOOP/WHILE/UNTILare exactly the verbs people write on one line, so group A starts here or it ships something that does not work. READhas no DATA pointer, andRESTOREis the verb that needs one. §4 has the detail; the short version is thatREADskips forward to the nextDATAreached in execution order, so aDATAline placed before itsREADis never found at all and a secondREADre-reads the same line. It is a live defect, not only a blocked verb.
Ordering suggestion, unchanged in spirit from the original: A (after the restructure), then D and J, which are self-contained, then F, which is 21 verbs of
aksl_f*and mostly mechanical. H needs a look atlibakgl's sprite and actor API before anything is filed. - Block skipping works by source line, and group A needs it to work by statement.
-
CI does not coverDone — the-DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON.akgl_buildjob in.gitea/workflows/ci.yaml. It turned out much cheaper than the deferral assumed, and the two reasons are worth keeping because both were guesses that measurement corrected:submodules: recursiveis not needed and costs 461 MB. It descends intoSDL_image/external,SDL_mixer/externalandSDL_ttf/external— aom, dav1d, libjxl, libtiff, mpg123, opus, flac and a dozen more — and not one of them is used. Every one configures as "Could NOT find". The job initialises exactly six submodules non-recursively instead, which takes about 25 seconds.- The build is about a minute of CPU, not "a long build". 330 object files, because SDL3 compiles out almost every backend that is not wanted here.
The one real system dependency is
libfreetype-devandlibharfbuzz-dev: SDL_ttf prefers the system copies and would otherwise reach forexternal/freetype, which the checkout deliberately does not clone. Two apt packages against two more submodules is an easy trade.Every step was verified from a clean clone before being written down, not inferred.
-
§6 items 12–17.All done, each with a regression test in the suite that pinned it. Item 16 was the last, and it was never a coding problem — it was blocked on the fidelity constraint §0.1 retired, and took about ten minutes once that went away.AKBASIC_KNOWN_FAILING_TESTSis empty as a result andtests/known_reference_defects.cis gone.§6 items 1–9 and 11 are now open in a way they were not. They were reproduced deliberately and left alone because faithfulness was the goal; it is not any more. Read them as an ordinary defect list. Item 4 (
mathPlusmutatesselfin place, whichCommandNEXTrelies on) is the one with real blast radius and still wantsFOR/NEXTcoverage before anybody touches it. Item 5 (binary operators add both of the right operand's numeric fields) is the one worth doing early: it is currently harmless, it makes two mutants insrc/value.cunkillable, and it is a landmine for any future value carrying both. -
Mutation survivors in
src/value.c—closed, with one correction to what was written here before.tests/value_arithmetic.cgrew two functions,test_maximum_length_string()andtest_pool_starts_empty(), and each was verified by hand-applying the mutant and watching the test fail rather than by assuming it would:Mutant Result strncpy(dest->stringval, src, AKBASIC_MAX_STRING_LENGTH - 1)→- 2killed dest->stringval[AKBASIC_MAX_STRING_LENGTH - 1] = '\0'→- 2killed strncpy(..., AKBASIC_MAX_STRING_LENGTH - 1)→- 0equivalent — cannot be killed memset(obj, 0, sizeof(*obj))deleted fromakbasic_valuepool_initkilled obj->next = 0→= 1killed The correction. This entry used to say all five were real bugs and that "one test that round-trips a 255-character string kills all five". Two things about that were wrong.
The
- 0mutant is equivalent.strncpy(dest, src, 256)into a 256-byte buffer writes at most 256 bytes, andset_string()has already refused anything longer than 255 two lines above, so the extra byte is always the terminatorstrncpywould have written anyway. It cannot be killed and should not be counted against the score.And the obvious test does not kill the truncating mutant. Joining a full-length string to an empty one passes with the mutant in place, because
akbasic_value_math_plusclonesselfinto the scratch before writing and the byte a short copy fails to write is already the right one. The operands have to sum to the limit without either of them being the answer — the test uses 200Xplus 55Z, and says so at the site, because this is exactly the sort of thing that gets "simplified" back into a passing no-op.Two survivors there are genuinely equivalent and cannot be killed:
rval_as_intandrval_as_float(src/value.c:30,35) tolerate+→-because the reference's habit of adding both of the right operand's numeric fields only works when the unused one is zero — §6 item 5. Fixing that defect would make these two mutants killable, which is a small argument for doing it.src/value.ctakes about 70 minutes to mutate in full (368 mutants, ~11s each, because almost everything links against it), which is why CI runssrc/symtab.cinstead and the whole-tree run is a localcmake --build build --target mutation.