Codegen Improvements for wasm-bindgen Compatibility

This release adds critical codegen improvements enabling DOL to compile to WASM with proper thread-safe global state management.

Key Changes

• Module path conversion: . → :: for Rust module paths
• Integer literal cleanup: Remove _i64 suffix, rely on Rust type inference
• Attribute translation: #[wasm_export] → #[wasm_bindgen]
• Thread-local pattern: Generate thread_local! with RefCell for sex var declarations

Thread-local Access Patterns

// DOL source
sex var GRID: Option<Grid> = None

// Generated Rust
thread_local! {
    static GRID: RefCell<Option<Grid>> = RefCell::new(None);
}

// Reads: GRID → GRID.with(|v| v.borrow().clone())
// Writes: GRID = x → GRID.with(|v| *v.borrow_mut() = x)
// Field access: CONFIG.width → CONFIG.with(|v| v.borrow().width)

Game of Life Spirit

• Renamed sex/ directory to effects/ for semantic clarity
• Added generated Rust code in codegen/rust/src/generated/
• Added comprehensive benchmark documentation
• Updated build script with integrated codegen pipeline

Testing

• All 541+ tests passing
• Game of Life compiles and runs successfully in browser

Full Changelog: v0.8.0...v0.8.1

Language Changes

New Preferred Keywords

• gen replaces gene for genome declarations
• rule replaces constraint for constraint declarations
• evo replaces evolves for evolution declarations
• docs replaces exegesis for documentation blocks

Modernized Type Names (Rust-aligned)

• string replaces String
• bool replaces Bool
• i8, i16, i32, i64 replace Int8, Int16, Int32, Int64
• u8, u16, u32, u64 replace UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, UInt64
• f32, f64 replace Float32, Float64
• () replaces Void for unit type
• Vec<T> replaces List<T> for vectors

Deprecated Syntax (warnings in 0.8, errors in 0.9)

The old keywords and types are deprecated but still supported with compiler warnings.

New Features

Tree Shaking

• Added TreeShaking pass for dead code elimination
• Analyzes dependency graphs to identify unreachable declarations
• Public declarations and their transitive dependencies are preserved
• Use --tree-shake flag in dol-parse CLI

CLI Improvements

• dol-parse --tree-shake - Enable tree shaking
• dol-parse --roots <names> - Specify additional root declarations
• dol-parse --shake-analyze - Dry-run to preview eliminations
• Output formats (pretty, JSON, compact, debug) show eliminated declarations

Migration Tool

• dol-migrate 0.7-to-0.8 <path> - Automatic syntax migration
• --dry-run flag to preview changes
• --diff flag to show before/after
• --modernize flag for return statement updates

Internal Changes

• Lexer updated with new keywords and type tokens
• Parser supports both old and new syntax
• Deprecation warnings emitted at parse time with source locations
• Type name normalization in codegen

Migration

# Auto-migrate your DOL files to v0.8.0 syntax
cargo run --bin dol-migrate --features cli -- 0.7-to-0.8 src/

# Preview changes first
cargo run --bin dol-migrate --features cli -- 0.7-to-0.8 --diff src/

Breaking Change

Replace self. with this. in method bodies for instance self-reference.

Features

• Add this keyword for instance self-reference (DOL 2.0)
• Add Expr::This AST variant with full compiler support
• Update all example files to use this.field/this.method() syntax
• WASM compiler stub for this (full support coming later)

Design Rationale

Chose this over self because:

1. Differentiates DOL from Rust's self conventions
2. Broader familiarity (JS, Java, C++, C#, TypeScript)
3. Emphasizes genes as domain objects, not implementation structs

Note: Self remains as the type-level self-reference (standard convention).

Migration

- self.value
+ this.value

- self.method()
+ this.method()

DOL v0.7.0

Bug Fixes

WASM Compiler Fixes (PR #9)

• Fixed duplicate global section bug in compile_file() that caused "failed to parse WebAssembly module" errors
• Fixed enum type comparison using wrong instruction (i32.eq instead of i64.eq after widening)

Sex System Integration (PR #8)

• Added SexVar declaration variant for mutable global state
• Fixed WasmImport struct and LocalsTable field definitions
• Fixed Const type mismatch in AST

Test Results

• All 44 WASM execution tests pass
• Full test suite passes on Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows
• Code coverage maintained

What's Included

• dol-parse - Parse and validate DOL files
• dol-check - Validation CLI
• dol-test - Test generator CLI
• WASM compilation support (45% complete)
• Sex/Effect system for side-effect tracking

Features

• Gene Inheritance: Child genes can now extend parent genes with gene Child extends Parent
  • Child fields are laid out after parent fields in memory
  • Topological ordering ensures parents are registered before children
  • Child methods can access inherited parent fields

Changes

• compute_gene_layout now copies parent fields first, preserving offsets
• Added compile_file(&DolFile) for multi-gene file compilation
• Added register_gene_layouts_ordered() for topological sorting
• Extended GeneContext to include parent field names

Tests

• 31 WASM execution tests passing (up from 28)
• Added 3 new inheritance-specific tests

Installation

cargo install dol

Or add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
dol = "0.6.0"

What's Changed

• feat(wasm): implement member access, function lookup, and gene methods by @ardeshir in #1
• feat(wasm): DOL to WebAssembly compilation with gene method support by @ardeshir in #2

New Contributors

• @ardeshir made their first contribution in #1

Full Changelog: v0.4.1...v0.5.1-wasm-complete

Full Changelog: v0.4.1...v0.5.0-investigation

Full Changelog: v0.3.1...v0.4.0-hir