ludic/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Ludic

Thanks for your interest in Ludic — an AoT-compiled game language with an ECS core, a deterministic fixed-point runtime, and a native 2D backend. This guide covers the unusual bit: Ludic is self-hosted, so the compiler, the runtime, and the tooling are all written in Ludic and built by Ludic.

Prerequisites

• clang (or another C compiler) — used once to assemble the checked-in LLVM-IR seed into the first ludicc, and thereafter only to assemble IR and link. No C is generated in a build.
• LLVM (for the web/wasm target: brew install llvm lld).
• macOS for the windowed Cocoa backend; headless PPM rendering works anywhere.

First build (bootstrap)

From a clean checkout, one line lifts the toolchain off the seed:

mkdir -p bin && clang selfhost/ludicc.seed.ll -o bin/ludicc && bin/ludicc tools/x/main.ludic -o bin/x

That gives you bin/x, the Ludic task runner that replaces every build/test shell script in the repo. From then on it builds everything — including itself:

bin/x build          # rebuild the whole toolchain into bin/ (ludicc, ludic, x, ludic-fmt, ludic-lsp)
bin/x help           # list every command

Always run x from the repository root, so assets/ and selfhost/ resolve.

The development loop

When you change the compiler or runtime, prove the self-hosting fixpoint still holds before you push:

bin/x reseed          # regenerate selfhost/ludicc.seed.ll after a compiler change
bin/x bootstrap-cfree # rebuild the compiler from the seed with NO C compiler in the loop
bin/x test            # the full regression suite

Other useful targets:

bin/x app <file.ludic> [--headless]   # compile a program to a native app in build/
bin/x selfhost-test                   # correctness + bootstrap fixpoints
bin/x test-tools                      # the editor-toolchain suite (ludic-fmt, ludic-lsp)
bin/x clean                           # remove build/, out.ppm and stray artifacts

Adding to the standard library

The stdlib lives in the runtime (runtime/) and is surfaced as namespaces (Math.*, Crypto.*, DateTime.*, Screen.*, …). When you add a symbol:

1. Implement it in the runtime / emitter as appropriate.
2. Document it: add one Markdown file per symbol under docs/language/<namespace>/ and register its id in tools/docgen/inventory.json. Each documented namespace gets exactly one directory (the docs check enforces this).
3. Add or extend an example under examples/ and a case in the test suite.
4. Run bin/x docs-gen --out build/pages && bin/x docs-check build/pages — the check fails if any inventory symbol lacks a page or is still seed text.
5. Add a changeset for the user-facing change: a small file under changes/ with a bump: level and a one-line summary. The next release folds it into CHANGELOG.md.

Versioning & releases

The toolchain is versioned with SemVer; VERSION is the single source of truth and ludicc --version (or x version) reports it.

Releases are changeset-driven. Every user-facing change ships with a changeset (step 5 above). Read the next release before cutting it:

x release --dry-run             # render the CHANGELOG section, write nothing

Then cut it:

x release [major|minor|patch]   # omit the level to derive it from the changesets
git push origin main --follow-tags

x release aggregates the pending changesets into a new CHANGELOG.md section — grouped by change type, with each changeset's markdown kept intact — bumps VERSION, commits chore(release): vX.Y.Z, and tags it.

Pushing the tag is what publishes. The release workflow builds the toolchain from the IR seed, runs x test, x test-tools and x bootstrap-cfree against the tagged tree, and only then creates the Forgejo release — with the source tarball, a Linux toolchain build, SHA256SUMS, and that version's CHANGELOG.md section as the notes. It refuses to publish if the tag and VERSION disagree or the changelog has no section for it.

macOS artifacts cannot be produced on the Linux runner. To attach one, run the same command CI runs from a Mac — it only adds assets the release is missing:

FORGEJO_TOKEN=… x publish v0.4.0

The tag doubles as the reproducible bootstrap point: the source archive plus its checked-in seed rebuild that exact toolchain.

Conventions

• Commits: Conventional Commits — type(scope): summary, with an optional ! before the colon for a breaking change. Keep the summary imperative and under ~72 chars. The types in use:

  type	for
  feat	a new user-facing capability (a stdlib namespace, a language feature)
  fix	a bug fix
  refactor	a change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
  perf	a performance improvement
  docs	documentation only (docs/, README, comments)
  test	tests only
  build	the build/bootstrap machinery (seed, bin/x, linking)
  ci	CI workflows under .forgejo/
  style	formatting/whitespace, no behaviour change
  chore	routine housekeeping with no other bucket
  revert	reverts a previous commit

  Common scopes: stdlib, lang, emit, runtime, tooling, docs, repo. Reference the issue you close with a Closes #NN trailer.

• Enforcement: the hooks in tools/git-hooks/ enforce this locally, and the commit-lint CI job is the backstop. Turn the hooks on once, per clone:

  git config core.hooksPath tools/git-hooks
  

  That activates the commit-msg hook (rejects a non-conforming summary) and the pre-commit hook (rejects unformatted Ludic). Both read the same rules CI does, so a green local commit is a green CI run.

• Formatting: ludic-fmt is the source of truth (2-space indent, LF, UTF-8); the repo .editorconfig mirrors it. Run bin/ludic-fmt -w on files you touch. The contract CI enforces is idempotence — ludic-fmt re-run on its own output is a no-op — which leaves deliberate hand alignment in place; it is not a blanket fmt(x) == x.

• Code structure: one job per file. Split large files by concern into subfolders rather than growing a single 500+-line module (see how selfhost/ and runtime/ are organised).

• Language of the toolchain: new runtime and tooling are written in Ludic, not C, Python, or JS. The only non-Ludic pieces are the LLVM-IR seed (selfhost/ludicc.seed.ll), the hand-written runtime/native/cocoa.ll / runtime/web/wasm.ll shims, and the legacy Python docgen (being ported).

Git history

The log has two eras: the pre-self-hosting Phase Nx: … / Merge Phase Nx: … commits, and the Conventional Commits used since. Decision: the old Phase history stays as-is. Rewriting already-pushed history (filter-repo/rebase) is destructive and non-reversible for anyone who has cloned, and it buys little — so we do not rewrite it. The convention is enforced going forward by the hook and the commit-lint job (both skip merge commits, so the old merges never trip it).

When the versioning work lands (issue #33), the first release tag doubles as a clean v0 baseline that brackets the Phase-era prefix — the safe, non-destructive version of "tidy the history" without touching a single commit.

Pull requests

• Base your branch on main.
• Ensure bin/x test (and bin/x bootstrap-cfree for compiler/runtime changes) pass, and that ludic-fmt leaves your files unchanged.
• Fill in the PR template checklist. Reference the issue you close with Closes #NN in the description or a commit message.

Reporting issues

Use the templates under .forgejo/issue_template/: a bug report, a proposal (new stdlib/language surface), or a cleanup/DX task. Choose the one that fits and fill in the sections.

By participating you agree to the Code of Conduct.