| One frontend where there were three, and a core that is not Clojure 438b247 nandi 20h ago | 1 | # The Nim core |
| 2 | |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 3 | The program. It owns the state, the screens, the IRC connection and the |
| 4 | message signing; Flutter is a renderer over the widget tree it emits, and |
| 5 | `dart/frq_core` is the FFI binding between them. |
| One frontend where there were three, and a core that is not Clojure 438b247 nandi 20h ago | 6 | |
| 7 | ``` |
| 8 | src/frq_core.nim the C ABI: every exported symbol, and nothing else |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 9 | src/frq/ui.nim the widget tree, in the screens' own tag vocabulary |
| 10 | src/frq/cells.nim every piece of state the screens read |
| 11 | src/frq/reducer.nim every event they can send, and what it does |
| 12 | src/frq/model.nim what a message and a room are |
| 13 | src/frq/rooms.nim the list, the overview, and the read marker |
| 14 | src/frq/members.nim who is in a channel, and what the server says of them |
| 15 | src/frq/conn.nim the socket, the TLS, the line framing |
| One frontend where there were three, and a core that is not Clojure 438b247 nandi 20h ago | 16 | src/frq/ircparse.nim the IRC wire format |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 17 | src/frq/handshake.nim CAP and the SASL exchange inside it |
| 18 | src/frq/atproto.nim handle → DID → PDS → session |
| 19 | src/frq/crypto.nim OpenSSL, bound: SHA-256 and Ed25519 |
| 20 | src/frq/msgsig.nim signing a mutation so freeq will accept it |
| 21 | src/frq/emoji.nim 1,884 emoji — generated, see below |
| 22 | src/frq/glyphs.nim a line split into words and pictures |
| 23 | src/frq/clock.nim server time in the reader's own zone |
| 24 | src/frq/store.nim what survives a restart |
| 25 | src/frq/screens/ connect, chats, chat, discover, settings |
| One frontend where there were three, and a core that is not Clojure 438b247 nandi 20h ago | 26 | ``` |
| 27 | |
| 28 | ## The ABI |
| 29 | |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 30 | Strings in, strings out, and JSON where the answer is not a single string — |
| 31 | deliberately, against a struct-based ABI: a struct means both sides agreeing |
| 32 | on a memory layout, and a field added later is a version skew that segfaults |
| 33 | instead of failing. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | Two rules, both of which cost a segfault to rediscover: |
| 36 | |
| 37 | * Every string the core returns is the **caller's** to free, with `frq_free`. |
| 38 | Nim's allocator is not Dart's. |
| 39 | * `frq_init` exists and does nothing. It used to call `NimMain`, and on Linux |
| 40 | `--app:lib` already runs the module initialisers from a library constructor |
| 41 | — so calling it again ran every module's top-level code a second time, which |
| 42 | for `conn.nim` meant `open()` on channels that were already open. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | ## Things that will bite |
| 45 | |
| 46 | * **Nothing is shared with the socket threads.** There are two — one reader, |
| 47 | one writer — and they speak only in channels. `recvLine(timeout)` does not |
| 48 | time out on a TLS socket, so a single thread cannot both wait for the server |
| 49 | and notice what the client wants to say. |
| 50 | * **`--mm:orc`, not refc.** refc gives each thread its own GC heap, so the |
| 51 | `Socket` the two threads share is a ref from another heap and dereferencing |
| 52 | it segfaults. |
| 53 | * **Every intra-package import says `frq/…`.** `import conn` and |
| 54 | `import frq/conn` name the same file by two paths and Nim compiles it twice, |
| 55 | giving two sets of globals and two states. |
| 56 | * **`emoji.nim` is generated.** It was `tools/emoji2nim.py` reading the |
| 57 | ClojureDart catalogue, which is gone; regenerating it now means going back to |
| 58 | Unicode's `emoji-test.txt` and filtering to what the Twemoji pack draws. |
| 59 | * **The crypto is bindings, not implementations.** `crypto.nim` is OpenSSL |
| 60 | through EVP. The RFC 8032 vectors in `tests/tcrypto.nim` check that this |
| 61 | drives it correctly — the seed in the right place, the one-shot signing form, |
| 62 | the bytes out in the right order — and not that Ed25519 is implemented |
| 63 | correctly, which is OpenSSL's problem. |
| A message in #test, from Nim 35994d4 nandi 19h ago | 64 | |
| 65 | ```bash |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 66 | just test nim # the whole suite |
| 67 | just test nim tircparse # one file |
| 68 | just build lib # libfrqcore.so into build/nim |
| Delete the spike that owned the screens 1bb3f77 nandi 19h ago | 69 | ``` |
| The window connects 1d62d1a nandi 19h ago | 70 | |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 71 | ## What is not here |
| One frontend where there were three, and a core that is not Clojure 438b247 nandi 20h ago | 72 | |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 73 | `frq.profile` and `frq.replies` were never ported and went with the |
| 74 | ClojureDart rather than moving: a Bluesky profile behind a nick, and asking |
| 75 | freeq what a collapsed msgid was. Neither had a screen in this app to appear |
| 76 | on. |
| One frontend where there were three, and a core that is not Clojure 438b247 nandi 20h ago | 77 | |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 78 | The emoji picker, the overview strip, the lightbox and the profile card are |
| 79 | state without a screen: the reducer moves them and nothing renders them, so |
| 80 | those buttons change colour and do nothing. |
| One frontend where there were three, and a core that is not Clojure 438b247 nandi 20h ago | 81 | |
| The last of the Clojure 284b59c nandi 9h ago | 82 | Untested against a real account: nobody has watched freeq accept a SASL |
| 83 | challenge response or a signature. The shapes are checked and the curve is |
| 84 | OpenSSL's, but the server has not said yes. |