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DESIGN.md · 571 lines · 28.2 KBmarkdown
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rustnim — a Rust → Nim transpiler

Status

Milestone 1 is reached: all of base16ct goes through. Every one of its
source files transpiles byte-for-byte as published, alloc half included, and
its decode and encode output is byte-identical to rustc's. 33 differential
cases, 29 behavioural and 4 rejections, plus 6 unit/integration tests. All
green. Run cargo test.

Passing today: functions, impl methods, trait impls (formatting traits and
From), structs, enums (C-like and data-carrying), Option/Result with
?, closures, unsafe, slice iterators (iter/iter_mut/enumerate/zip/chunks_exact/
chunks_exact_mut/windows), borrowed slices as values and return types,
let/let mut, the full integer
and float operator set at exact widths, as casts, if/while/loop/for,
match including patterns that bind, Vec/slices/arrays, type aliases
(including generic ones), function-typed parameters (impl Fn(A) -> B),
multi-file input, #[cfg] evaluation, and println!/format! with {},
{:?}, {:x}, {:b}, positional and inline-named arguments, and
zero/space padding.

Why this exists

We tried tarekwasfy01/Code-Transpiler,
which advertises rust as a source language, on the base16ct crate. It emits
empty files and exits 0. The full investigation is in findings/
and is published at
https://rickub.com/nandi/code-transpiler-rust-frontend-findings

The decisive finding, and the reason this is a new project rather than a patch:
its Universal AST cannot represent Rust. defaultSemanticTypeContract() in
internal/backend/semantic_program.go:85 is hardcoded to

numeric: binary64, integer_width: unknown, truth: r_compatible,
ownership: unknown, index_base: 1

and semantic_document.go:1014 validates that every contract equals exactly
that, while typed_operation.go:46 rejects any value model that is not
tagged_dynamic_binary64. There is no integer width and no ownership in the
model at all. Code like base16ct's constant-time decoder —

ret += (((0x2fi16 - byte) & (byte - 0x3a)) >> 8) & (byte - 47);

— depends on exact 16-bit signed wrapping and arithmetic shift. Lowering that
into a 1-indexed dynamic float64 model produces silently wrong answers. So the
first rule of this project is the one that codebase broke:

Never approximate a semantic you cannot represent. Fail loudly instead.

src/ty.rs already does this: i128/u128 are rejected with a reason rather
than widened or truncated.

Architecture

Rust source ──syn──> syn AST ──lower──> Nim source ──nim c──> binary

The frontend is syn, deliberately. Hand-rolling a Rust grammar is how the
other project went wrong; a correct parser is not the interesting part of this
problem. The interesting part is the lowering, which is where all the work goes.

Planned modules:

file role state
src/ty.rs Rust type → Nim type, exact widths, explicit rejections written
src/lower.rs items, statements, expressions → Nim written
src/fmt.rs println!/format! format-string handling written
src/prelude.nim Option/Result/panic/Display/Debug runtime written
src/main.rs CLI: rustnim <in.rs> -o <out.nim> written
tests/differential.rs the runner described below written

Enums, Option and Result

A C-like enum becomes a plain Nim enum, which compares, orders and
case-checks the way Rust's does. A data-carrying enum becomes a Nim object
variant — a discriminant enum plus one branch per variant — which is the same
shape the prelude already uses for Option and Result. Nim requires the
branches of a variant object to have distinct field names, so each payload
field is prefixed with its variant.

match takes one of two forms. Arms that neither bind nor destructure become
a Nim case, which is exhaustiveness-checked the way Rust's is. Arms that do
bind become an if/elif chain with the bindings emitted as lets, because
Nim's case cannot destructure. The chain always ends in an arm that panics:
Rust proved it unreachable, but Nim cannot see that, and leaving the chain
open would silently fall through instead.

Ok, Err and Some are emitted with their full type arguments
(rsOk[T, E](v)), because Nim cannot infer E from an Ok(v) alone. That is
why the expected type has to reach a match arm as well as a let.

? expands to statements — a temporary, a discriminant test, and an early
return — which are emitted ahead of the line being built. Rust inserts a
From::from on the error there; we accept only the case where the two error
types already agree, rather than assume a conversion is the identity. ? in a
while condition is rejected: the early return would run once before the
loop rather than on each iteration.

Trait impls

A Display impl becomes proc rsDisplay(self: T): string. Rust's Formatter
is a sink and the observable result of {} is exactly the bytes written into
it, so a write through the formatter appends to that string — a fmt body
may write repeatedly, and UpperHex writes once per byte in a loop. A body
that does anything else with the formatter — padding, precision,
debug_struct — is rejected, because those change the output and this model
does not carry them. Debug, LowerHex, UpperHex, Binary and Octal
work the same way.

Writing into a string cannot fail, so ? on a formatter write is a no-op. ?
on anything else inside a fmt body can fail, and format! panics when a
formatting impl returns an error — so that is what the error branch does, with
std's own message.

{:x} on an integer formats its two's-complement bit pattern; on any other
type it calls that type's own LowerHex impl. Those are different operations,
so a radix format on an argument of unknown type is rejected rather than
guessed.

impl From<A> for B becomes a conversion proc that .into() resolves
through. A marker trait with no items generates nothing: we do not model trait
resolution anywhere, so there is nothing for it to affect; a use that actually
needed the trait (a dyn, a bound) is rejected where it appears. Any other
trait impl is rejected.

Methods are keyed by (receiver type, name), not by name alone — two types
may define the same method, and Nim tells them apart by overload resolution on
the first parameter.

fmt::Error is not the same type as a crate's own Error. Collapsing a
qualified path to its last segment merged them, which was a real soundness
bug; core::fmt's types are now recognised by their qualified name.

Slice iterators are resolved to one index loop

Rust's slice iterators are lazy and compose. Nim's for is over one sequence,
so a chain of adaptors is resolved into a small IR and emitted as a single
index loop in which each binding is an lvalue into the original container.
That is what makes *d = v through iter_mut() write back to the caller's
slice instead of to a copy, and what lets chunks_exact(2) hand out a window
that indexes straight into the source with an offset.

Only adaptors with an exact index-loop equivalent are accepted. map,
filter and take_while are rejected rather than partially honoured:
silently dropping an adaptor would change which elements the loop visits.

zip stops at the shorter side, as Rust's does — that is a test, not an
assumption (tests/cases/023).

Borrowed slices are views, not copies

&[T] is a borrow. Nim's experimental view types model exactly that,
including returning one from a proc: writing through the returned view is
visible in the original buffer. That was probed against Nim 2.2.4 before being
relied on, because copying into a seq would print the right bytes while
silently changing aliasing.

Nim does allow a view inside an object and inside an object field — both
probed, both preserving aliasing — so Result<&[u8], E> and
HexDisplay<'a>(&'a [u8]) both work. (An earlier version of this document
claimed otherwise; that was wrong.)

Two real constraints remain. Nim will not let a let borrow out of a local,
so .unwrap()/.expect() on a Result holding a view is expanded inline and
the binding becomes an alias — a view is a reference, so there is nothing to
materialise, and the substituted expression is a plain field access that
re-evaluates nothing. And s.get(a..b) is an Option of a view whose
validity is what matters: the view and its condition travel together through
ok_or until a ? or unwrap resolves them into a bounds check plus a
binding. Keeping such an Option in a variable is rejected with a message
saying so.

A let binding a borrow keeps the view rather than copying into a seq:
let res = encode(..)? names the caller's buffer, and copying would print the
right bytes while silently breaking the aliasing.

Closures and unsafe

unsafe is a permission marker, not a semantic change: it does not alter what
the enclosed operations mean. So the block is transparent, and every operation
inside still goes through the ordinary lowering and is still rejected if it has
no faithful mapping. unsafe fn lowers like any other proc.

A closure becomes a Nim anonymous proc. Nim's closures capture by reference, as
Rust's non-move closures do; a move closure captures by value, which is a
different thing, so it is rejected rather than lowered to the same construct.
impl Fn(A) -> B is left at Nim's default calling convention, which accepts
both a plain top-level proc and a capturing closure — as Rust's impl Fn does.

.map/.and_then over an Option/Result are expanded inline with the
closure's parameter aliased to the payload, rather than handed to a generic
proc. That keeps the whole thing an expression and keeps a view a view.

&str is a borrowed view of someone else's bytes, so it maps to
openArray[char], not to an owned string. Nim accepts a string argument
for an openArray[char] parameter, so a literal still passes straight through.
from_utf8_unchecked reinterprets a byte view as a character view over the
same memory — no copy, no validation, and writes through the original are
visible, as in Rust.

Modules

Rust keeps lower::decode and mixed::decode apart by module; flattening into
one Nim module would merge them — they are different functions. So the first
input is the crate root and each later one is a module named by its file stem,
items are emitted as <module>_<name>, and a call resolves through an explicit
qualifier, then the current module, then what use brought into scope, then
the root.

Generics

Rust type parameters become Nim's. Nim instantiates a generic structurally at
the call site much as Rust does, so fn f<T>(x: T) -> T has a direct target in
proc f[T](x: T): T and no monomorphisation pass is needed.

Trait bounds and where clauses are dropped. That is sound in the
direction that matters: an operation the bound permitted either exists for the
instantiated type or is a compile error at that instantiation site. Dropping a
bound cannot make an accepted program mean something different — it only makes
rustnim accept some programs rustc would reject, which does not matter when
the input is known-good Rust. (Where it would matter is bound-directed
method selection, e.g. blanket impls choosing between candidates. We do not
model trait resolution at all, so such a program is rejected elsewhere.)

Const generic parameters have no Nim equivalent and are still rejected.

Two things need more than a rename. Nim cannot infer an object's generic
parameters from a constructor's field values, so Pair { a: 1, b: 2 } is
emitted as Pair[int32](...) using the expected type — and a generic enum's
unit variant (Holder::Empty) likewise. And a binding's annotation cannot
name a parameter Nim is still inferring, so call sites run a small unifier:
the callee's declared parameter types are matched against the actual argument
types to bind T, and the result is substituted into the return type.

Declaration order

Rust has no declaration-before-use rule and Nim does, so every proc is
forward-declared between the type definitions and the bodies. Reordering the
input instead would not handle mutual recursion.

Type propagation is load-bearing

Rust infers an unsuffixed integer literal's type from context and falls back
to i32; Nim falls back to 64-bit int. So lower.rs threads an expected
type
down through every expression — into let annotations, call arguments,
match patterns, compound assignments and both operands of a binary — and
annotates every binding it emits. Without that, let x: u8 = 200; x + 100
means two different things in the two languages. With it, a width the lowering
gets wrong becomes a Nim compile error (a loud failure, reported by the
runner) rather than a wrong answer.

Mapping decisions made so far

  • Integers: exact width. i32int32, usizeuint, etc. i128/u128
    rejected.
  • Indexing: both 0-based. Direct.
  • &T → plain value. &mut Tvar T parameter.
  • &[T]openArray[T] in parameter position, seq[T] when owned.
    Nim::owned() performs that conversion.
  • Ownership/borrowck: ignored. Nim is GC'd; for safe Rust this is sound.
  • Option/Result → object variants in the prelude.
  • match → Nim case where the arms are simple, if/elif when arms have
    guards or bindings.
  • Rust's expression-orientation maps well: Nim if/case are expressions
    too, and a proc's trailing expression is its return value.

Settled empirically (Nim 2.2.4 vs rustc 1.98.1, both run)

  1. Nim's shr on a signed integer is arithmetic, matching Rust.
    int16(-256) shr 8 = -1 in Nim; (-256i16) >> 8 = -1 in Rust.
    base16ct's decoder depends on this, so it maps directly with no helper.

  2. Nim's fixed-width unsigned arithmetic wraps silently, matching Rust's
    wrapping_*. uint8(200) + 100 = 44 in Nim; 200u8.wrapping_add(100)
    = 44 in Rust. So wrapping_add on an unsigned type is just +.

  3. We model rustc's debug profile. Rust debug builds panic on signed
    integer overflow; Nim's default build raises OverflowDefect on it. Those
    are the matching pair, so the runner invokes rustc without -O and nim c with its defaults, and tests/cases/016 pins the behaviour. A Rust
    panic exits 101 where a Nim Defect exits 1, so every generated module ends
    with a handler that maps one to the other — otherwise the runner's
    exit-status comparison would be vacuous. wrapping_* is therefore an
    explicit operation on both sides: unsigned maps to the bare operator (item
    2), signed is routed through the unsigned view of the same width.

  4. char round-trips. Rust char → Nim Rune, confirmed for ASCII and
    non-ASCII scalars in both {} and {:?}, and across as u32
    (tests/cases/014).

  5. Nim's integer conversion T(x) truncates; it does not range-check.
    uint8(511'u16) is 255, uint8(300'i32) is 44, uint8(-1'i32) is
    255 — the same answers as cast[uint8]. An earlier version of this
    document asserted that T(x) range-checks, and used that to justify
    cast. The conclusion stands — cast is the clearer spelling of
    "truncate" — but the stated reason was wrong, and it had been assumed
    rather than probed. Found by sabotaging the cast lowering and watching the
    exhaustive proof not fail, which is what a sabotage test is for.

Still open

  1. Const generic parameters, move closures, closure bodies with statements,
    trait objects, macro_rules! definitions and raw pointers are rejected
    with a reason. A trait declaration lowers to nothing — trait resolution
    is not modelled — but one giving a method a default body is rejected,
    since that body is code with no impl to be emitted into.
    Lifetime parameters are not a rejection: they carry no runtime meaning
    and Nim is GC'd, so fn encode<'a>(..) lowers fine.
  2. saturating_* and checked_* are implemented, detecting overflow on the
    unsigned view of the same width rather than with a range check that would
    itself trap. wrapping_*, overflowing_* and strict_* are not all
    covered: only add, sub and mul have the saturating and checked forms.
  3. Float formatting matches Rust for ordinary values and for inf/NaN, but
    the exponent-form thresholds have only been checked at 1e21.
  4. Functions are scoped by module now, but types are still global: two
    modules declaring the same type name would collide. Relatedly, a crate's
    own type Result<T> is told apart from the builtin Result<T, E> by
    arity, which is not how Rust resolves it.
  5. Host #[cfg] predicates — unix, windows, target_os, target_arch,
    target_family, target_pointer_width, target_endian — are evaluated
    against the machine, since the generated Nim is compiled for it. That makes
    the output host-shaped: a crate branching on platform has had that branch
    decided at transpile time. doc/doctest/miri are false. A custom or
    build-script cfg (crossbeam_loom, target_has_atomic) has no value we
    could know and is rejected.
  6. Associated types (impl Iterator { type Item = .. }) and mod
    directories (specialized/mod.rs) are not implemented.
  7. String::from_utf8_unchecked copies, because Nim's string is an owned
    value. Rust's consumes the Vec without copying. Observably the same from
    the caller, but it is a copy where Rust has none.

A second crate: does this generalise, or is it fitted to base16ct?

base16ct is the crate this was built toward, so passing it proves less than
it looks. adler2 2.0.1 was picked as a deliberately different shape —
a stateful struct with methods, operator-overload trait impls, a hand-unrolled
four-lane inner loop — and it now works: tests/cases/029-adler2-crate/
transpiles algo.rs byte-for-byte as published, with lib.rs's items and a
driver, and its checksums are byte-identical to rustc's across every single
byte, every length to 600 (crossing the 4-byte unrolling boundary and the
5552-chunk path), and 144 incremental-write splits.

It needed real work, which is the honest part of the answer. Ten features:
trait impls generalised beyond formatting and From (any trait's methods
become procs on the type, with the operator traits wired into +=/+
dispatch), Self, Type::method() static calls, u32::from between
primitives, tuple-destructuring let, split_at, iterators bound to
variables and .remainder(), [0; 4] as an array rather than a seq, and
the bare #[cfg] flags.

It also caught a regression I had introduced: the three-phase emission
added for forward declarations was silently dropping const items declared
inside a function body. base16ct has none, so 33 passing cases said
nothing about it.

What the other crates did

Run without fixing anything, to see where the wall is rather than to move it:

crate outcome
adler2 2.0.1 works, byte-identical
siphasher 1.0.1 rejected: u128
rustc-hash 2.1.1 rejected: u128
hex 0.4.3 rejected: impl Iterator needs an associated type
crc32fast 1.5.0 rejected: directory modules (specialized/mod.rs), then SIMD intrinsics

Two of the five stop at u128, which is the founding rule doing its job
rather than a gap: they are told they cannot be translated instead of being
handed a silently truncated hasher. The other two are honest missing
features — associated types, and mod directories.

How far off is a crate like libcosmic?

Measured, not guessed. Running rustnim over libcosmic's own src/:

0 of 164 files produce any translation
50,633 lines, 112 direct dependencies

with 66 generic-parameter blockers, 20 trait objects, 51 async uses, 235
where clauses, 73 associated types and 1,104 lifetime annotations. Those are
not features the crate happens to use; they are its architecture. libcosmic
is a north star, not a next step.

The blocker survey, and what it says about roadmaps

400 crates from the local registry (under 4,000 lines each), all their module
files passed together, first blocker recorded:

blocker start +host-cfg +generics +assoc types
unevaluable #[cfg] 124 34 34 34
generic type parameter 69 91 1 1
associated types in an impl 54 63 87 2
unsupported type 20 29 60 71
trait object 17 25 30 35
macro definition 21 24 25 32
raw pointer 12 22 24 28
crates fully transpiled 2 2 2 3

This has now happened twice. Evaluating the host #[cfg] predicates cleared
90 of 124 blockers and moved the fully-working count by zero. Generics then
cleared 90 of 91 and moved it by zero again. Every crate each unblocked simply
hit its next blocker.

That is the shape of the problem: blockers are deep, not wide. A frequency
ranking of first blockers is not a roadmap — it says which feature is most
often first, not which one finishes a crate. base16ct, adler2 and
cosmic-theme's spacing model work because their whole stack was ground
through, one blocker at a time.

Does the stack have a bottom?

If the stacks are drawn from one shared finite pool of language features, then
clearing the pool clears every stack at once, and the flat counts above are
just what progress looks like before a step change. That is a real possibility
and it is testable, so it was tested. Sampling every file of the 400 crates
rather than only each crate's first blocker — 1,766 blocker observations:

count bounded?
distinct normalised blocker kinds 63 yes — this is the language-feature pool
distinct unsupported std methods 80 no — this is std's surface
distinct unknown functions 75 no — these are calls into dependencies
distinct unsupported macros 13 no

So the answer is both, split by class:

  • Language features do bottom out. 63 distinct kinds, and each one cleared
    is cleared for every crate forever. This part is finite and the step-change
    intuition is correct for it. Associated types produced the first net gain
    (2 → 3), which is what that dynamic looks like starting.
  • The API surface does not. 80 distinct std methods appeared in 1,766
    samples of small crates; std has thousands of items, and each needs a
    verified Nim equivalent rather than a guess. That is enumerable but it has
    no bottom you reach by clearing features.
  • Dependencies are not a pool at all. 315 of the 400 crates depend on
    other crates, which have to be transpiled too, recursively, until the graph
    ends at libc, proc macros or SIMD intrinsics — which it does, and those do
    not translate.

And among the 85 dependency-free crates, 1 of 84 currently transpiles in full.
So even with dependencies removed from the picture, features alone are not the
only remaining gate.

So the ranking above is not a roadmap — it says which feature is most often
first, which is not the same as which feature finishes a crate. The only
honest way to add a crate is to pick it and clear its stack, as was done
twice.

Generics and associated types are now done. By frequency the next are
unsupported types (71), trait objects (35) and macro_rules! definitions (32)
— but see above before treating that as a plan.

cosmic-theme: what was reachable

tests/cases/032-cosmic-theme-spacing/ transpiles corner.rs, spacing.rs
and layout.rs from cosmic-theme 1.0.0 — the spacing scale, corner radii
and density model a COSMIC-native UI needs to match the desktop — with output
byte-identical to rustc's, including the Density/Spacing and
Roundness/CornerRadii round trips.

Those files are the crate's own, with one mechanical change recorded here: the
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize} line and the Serialize, Deserialize
entries in two derive lists were removed, because the oracle is plain
rustc with no dependencies available. Nothing else was touched; rustnim
ignores both anyway.

The rest of cosmic-themetheme.rs (1,830 lines), color.rs,
cosmic_palette.rs, derivation.rs, steps.rs, composite.rs — is colour
work built on palette (40,874 lines across 122 files, plus a proc-macro
crate). mode.rs needs cosmic-config and its derive macro. Those are
dependency walls, not language gaps.

Proof of byte-identity for base16ct

PROOF.md sets out what is actually established: exhaustive
agreement over every two-byte decode input (65,536), every two-byte encode
input (65,536), every single byte through encode_str and HexDisplay, and
every length to 128 — plus a compositional argument extending those to inputs
of any length, and 20,000 pseudorandom multi-chunk cases attacking the one
step in that argument that is inspection rather than enumeration. Run it with
cargo test --test proof. It is explicit about the difference between the
exhaustive parts and the sampled ones.

Testing: differential, not golden

The bar is behavioural equivalence with rustc, not that the output looks
plausible. For each case in tests/cases/:

rustc case.rs && ./case            > expected
rustnim case.rs -o case.nim && nim c -r case.nim > actual
diff expected actual

A case only counts as passing when both binaries build and produce identical
stdout and exit with the same status.

tests/differential.rs implements this, and checks each stage separately so a
failure says where it went wrong: rustnim, rustc, nim, or diff. Three
guards exist specifically because of how the other transpiler failed:

  • rustnim exiting 0 while writing no output file is a failure.
  • rustnim exiting 0 while writing an empty output file is a failure.
  • An empty corpus is a failure, so the runner cannot pass by finding
    nothing to do.

All three have been verified by deliberately breaking the transpiler and
confirming the runner goes red.

Cases carry directives in leading //@ comments:

directive meaning
//@ reject: <substring> rustnim must fail, with this in its message
//@ skip: <reason> not run; reported as skipped
//@ args: <argv> passed to both binaries
//@ stdin: <line> fed to both binaries

reject cases are how the "fail loudly" rule is tested rather than merely
stated: 900904 pin the rejections of i128, an unmapped standard-library
method, a float→int cast, an unimplemented format spec, and a closure.

Run one case with RUSTNIM_CASE=005 cargo test --test differential -- --nocapture. Nim is found at .nim-toolchain/bin/nim in the repository root
or any parent, or via RUSTNIM_NIM.

Toolchain

  • rustc / cargo 1.98.1 — system.
  • Nim 2.2.4 — vendored at .nim-toolchain/ (gitignored; downloaded from
    nim-lang.org, not installed system-wide). Binary: .nim-toolchain/bin/nim.

Milestone 1

Transpile base16ct 1.0.0 — the crate the other transpiler failed on — and
have its decoder produce byte-identical output to the Rust original.

Reached. tests/cases/026-base16ct-crate/ transpiles every source file
of base16ct 1.0.0
error.rs, lower.rs, upper.rs, mixed.rs and
display.rs, each byte-for-byte as published on crates.io, verified with
cmp rather than by eye — together with lib.rs's decoded_len,
encoded_len and decode_inner verbatim. The alloc half is on, via
--cfg feature=alloc. Output is byte-identical to rustc's:

lower ok abcd1234 len=4              decode: lower, upper, mixed
upper-rej err InvalidEncoding ...    upper correctly rejects lowercase
oddlen err InvalidLength / invalid Base16 length     <- Debug and Display
encode ok 6162636431323334 len=8     encode, both cases
encode_str ok abcd1234 len=8         closure over unsafe, borrowed &str
Ok([171, 205, 18, 52])               decode_vec       \
abcd1234                             encode_string     > the alloc half
ABCD1234 abcd1234                    HexDisplay {:X} {:x}

Everything lowers as written: dst.get_mut(..decoded_len(src)?),
src.chunks_exact(2).zip(dst.iter_mut()), *dst = byte as u8, the returned
&'a [u8] view into the caller's buffer, encode(src, dst).map(|r| unsafe { core::str::from_utf8_unchecked(r) }), and HexDisplay's UpperHex impl
writing once per byte into the formatter.

This is the crate whose six files the transpiler in findings/ emitted empty
output for, while exiting 0.

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# rustnim — a Rust → Nim transpiler

## Status

**Milestone 1 is reached: all of `base16ct` goes through.** Every one of its
source files transpiles byte-for-byte as published, `alloc` half included, and
its decode and encode output is byte-identical to rustc's. 33 differential
cases, 29 behavioural and 4 rejections, plus 6 unit/integration tests. All
green. Run `cargo test`.

Passing today: functions, `impl` methods, trait impls (formatting traits and
`From`), structs, enums (C-like and data-carrying), `Option`/`Result` with
`?`, closures, `unsafe`, slice iterators (`iter`/`iter_mut`/`enumerate`/`zip`/`chunks_exact`/
`chunks_exact_mut`/`windows`), borrowed slices as values and return types,
`let`/`let mut`, the full integer
and float operator set at exact widths, `as` casts, `if`/`while`/`loop`/`for`,
`match` including patterns that bind, `Vec`/slices/arrays, type aliases
(including generic ones), function-typed parameters (`impl Fn(A) -> B`),
multi-file input, `#[cfg]` evaluation, and `println!`/`format!` with `{}`,
`{:?}`, `{:x}`, `{:b}`, positional and inline-named arguments, and
zero/space padding.

## Why this exists

We tried [tarekwasfy01/Code-Transpiler](https://github.com/tarekwasfy01/Code-Transpiler),
which advertises `rust` as a source language, on the `base16ct` crate. It emits
empty files and exits 0. The full investigation is in [`findings/`](findings/)
and is published at
https://rickub.com/nandi/code-transpiler-rust-frontend-findings

The decisive finding, and the reason this is a new project rather than a patch:
its Universal AST cannot represent Rust. `defaultSemanticTypeContract()` in
`internal/backend/semantic_program.go:85` is hardcoded to

```
numeric: binary64, integer_width: unknown, truth: r_compatible,
ownership: unknown, index_base: 1
```

and `semantic_document.go:1014` *validates* that every contract equals exactly
that, while `typed_operation.go:46` rejects any value model that is not
`tagged_dynamic_binary64`. There is no integer width and no ownership in the
model at all. Code like `base16ct`'s constant-time decoder —

```rust
ret += (((0x2fi16 - byte) & (byte - 0x3a)) >> 8) & (byte - 47);
```

— depends on exact 16-bit signed wrapping and arithmetic shift. Lowering that
into a 1-indexed dynamic float64 model produces silently wrong answers. So the
first rule of this project is the one that codebase broke:

> **Never approximate a semantic you cannot represent. Fail loudly instead.**

`src/ty.rs` already does this: `i128`/`u128` are rejected with a reason rather
than widened or truncated.

## Architecture

```
Rust source ──syn──> syn AST ──lower──> Nim source ──nim c──> binary
```

**The frontend is `syn`, deliberately.** Hand-rolling a Rust grammar is how the
other project went wrong; a correct parser is not the interesting part of this
problem. The interesting part is the lowering, which is where all the work goes.

Planned modules:

| file | role | state |
|---|---|---|
| `src/ty.rs` | Rust type → Nim type, exact widths, explicit rejections | written |
| `src/lower.rs` | items, statements, expressions → Nim | written |
| `src/fmt.rs` | `println!`/`format!` format-string handling | written |
| `src/prelude.nim` | `Option`/`Result`/panic/`Display`/`Debug` runtime | written |
| `src/main.rs` | CLI: `rustnim <in.rs> -o <out.nim>` | written |
| `tests/differential.rs` | the runner described below | written |

### Enums, `Option` and `Result`

A C-like enum becomes a plain Nim `enum`, which compares, orders and
`case`-checks the way Rust's does. A data-carrying enum becomes a Nim object
variant — a discriminant enum plus one branch per variant — which is the same
shape the prelude already uses for `Option` and `Result`. Nim requires the
branches of a variant object to have distinct field names, so each payload
field is prefixed with its variant.

`match` takes one of two forms. Arms that neither bind nor destructure become
a Nim `case`, which is exhaustiveness-checked the way Rust's is. Arms that do
bind become an `if`/`elif` chain with the bindings emitted as `let`s, because
Nim's `case` cannot destructure. The chain always ends in an arm that panics:
Rust proved it unreachable, but Nim cannot see that, and leaving the chain
open would silently fall through instead.

`Ok`, `Err` and `Some` are emitted with their full type arguments
(`rsOk[T, E](v)`), because Nim cannot infer `E` from an `Ok(v)` alone. That is
why the expected type has to reach a `match` arm as well as a `let`.

`?` expands to statements — a temporary, a discriminant test, and an early
`return` — which are emitted ahead of the line being built. Rust inserts a
`From::from` on the error there; we accept only the case where the two error
types already agree, rather than assume a conversion is the identity. `?` in a
`while` condition is rejected: the early return would run once before the
loop rather than on each iteration.

### Trait impls

A `Display` impl becomes `proc rsDisplay(self: T): string`. Rust's `Formatter`
is a sink and the observable result of `{}` is exactly the bytes written into
it, so a write through the formatter **appends** to that string — a `fmt` body
may write repeatedly, and `UpperHex` writes once per byte in a loop. A body
that does anything else with the formatter — padding, precision,
`debug_struct` — is rejected, because those change the output and this model
does not carry them. `Debug`, `LowerHex`, `UpperHex`, `Binary` and `Octal`
work the same way.

Writing into a string cannot fail, so `?` on a formatter write is a no-op. `?`
on anything else inside a `fmt` body *can* fail, and `format!` panics when a
formatting impl returns an error — so that is what the error branch does, with
std's own message.

`{:x}` on an integer formats its two's-complement bit pattern; on any other
type it calls that type's own `LowerHex` impl. Those are different operations,
so a radix format on an argument of unknown type is rejected rather than
guessed.

`impl From<A> for B` becomes a conversion proc that `.into()` resolves
through. A marker trait with no items generates nothing: we do not model trait
resolution anywhere, so there is nothing for it to affect; a use that actually
needed the trait (a `dyn`, a bound) is rejected where it appears. Any other
trait impl is rejected.

Methods are keyed by `(receiver type, name)`, not by name alone — two types
may define the same method, and Nim tells them apart by overload resolution on
the first parameter.

`fmt::Error` is *not* the same type as a crate's own `Error`. Collapsing a
qualified path to its last segment merged them, which was a real soundness
bug; `core::fmt`'s types are now recognised by their qualified name.

### Slice iterators are resolved to one index loop

Rust's slice iterators are lazy and compose. Nim's `for` is over one sequence,
so a chain of adaptors is resolved into a small IR and emitted as a single
index loop in which **each binding is an lvalue into the original container**.
That is what makes `*d = v` through `iter_mut()` write back to the caller's
slice instead of to a copy, and what lets `chunks_exact(2)` hand out a window
that indexes straight into the source with an offset.

Only adaptors with an exact index-loop equivalent are accepted. `map`,
`filter` and `take_while` are rejected rather than partially honoured:
silently dropping an adaptor would change which elements the loop visits.

`zip` stops at the shorter side, as Rust's does — that is a test, not an
assumption (`tests/cases/023`).

### Borrowed slices are views, not copies

`&[T]` is a borrow. Nim's experimental view types model exactly that,
including returning one from a proc: writing through the returned view is
visible in the original buffer. That was probed against Nim 2.2.4 before being
relied on, because copying into a `seq` would print the right bytes while
silently changing aliasing.

Nim does allow a view inside an object and inside an object *field* — both
probed, both preserving aliasing — so `Result<&[u8], E>` and
`HexDisplay<'a>(&'a [u8])` both work. (An earlier version of this document
claimed otherwise; that was wrong.)

Two real constraints remain. Nim will not let a `let` borrow out of a local,
so `.unwrap()`/`.expect()` on a `Result` holding a view is expanded inline and
the binding becomes an alias — a view is a reference, so there is nothing to
materialise, and the substituted expression is a plain field access that
re-evaluates nothing. And `s.get(a..b)` is an `Option` of a view whose
*validity* is what matters: the view and its condition travel together through
`ok_or` until a `?` or `unwrap` resolves them into a bounds check plus a
binding. Keeping such an `Option` in a variable is rejected with a message
saying so.

A `let` binding a borrow keeps the view rather than copying into a `seq`:
`let res = encode(..)?` names the caller's buffer, and copying would print the
right bytes while silently breaking the aliasing.

### Closures and `unsafe`

`unsafe` is a permission marker, not a semantic change: it does not alter what
the enclosed operations mean. So the block is transparent, and every operation
inside still goes through the ordinary lowering and is still rejected if it has
no faithful mapping. `unsafe fn` lowers like any other proc.

A closure becomes a Nim anonymous proc. Nim's closures capture by reference, as
Rust's non-`move` closures do; a `move` closure captures by value, which is a
different thing, so it is rejected rather than lowered to the same construct.
`impl Fn(A) -> B` is left at Nim's default calling convention, which accepts
both a plain top-level proc and a capturing closure — as Rust's `impl Fn` does.

`.map`/`.and_then` over an `Option`/`Result` are expanded inline with the
closure's parameter aliased to the payload, rather than handed to a generic
proc. That keeps the whole thing an expression and keeps a view a view.

`&str` is a borrowed view of someone else's bytes, so it maps to
`openArray[char]`, not to an owned `string`. Nim accepts a `string` argument
for an `openArray[char]` parameter, so a literal still passes straight through.
`from_utf8_unchecked` reinterprets a byte view as a character view over the
same memory — no copy, no validation, and writes through the original are
visible, as in Rust.

### Modules

Rust keeps `lower::decode` and `mixed::decode` apart by module; flattening into
one Nim module would merge them — they are *different functions*. So the first
input is the crate root and each later one is a module named by its file stem,
items are emitted as `<module>_<name>`, and a call resolves through an explicit
qualifier, then the current module, then what `use` brought into scope, then
the root.

### Generics

Rust type parameters become Nim's. Nim instantiates a generic structurally at
the call site much as Rust does, so `fn f<T>(x: T) -> T` has a direct target in
`proc f[T](x: T): T` and no monomorphisation pass is needed.

**Trait bounds and `where` clauses are dropped.** That is sound in the
direction that matters: an operation the bound permitted either exists for the
instantiated type or is a compile error at that instantiation site. Dropping a
bound cannot make an accepted program mean something different — it only makes
rustnim accept some programs rustc would reject, which does not matter when
the input is known-good Rust. (Where it *would* matter is bound-directed
method selection, e.g. blanket impls choosing between candidates. We do not
model trait resolution at all, so such a program is rejected elsewhere.)

Const generic parameters have no Nim equivalent and are still rejected.

Two things need more than a rename. Nim cannot infer an object's generic
parameters from a constructor's field values, so `Pair { a: 1, b: 2 }` is
emitted as `Pair[int32](...)` using the expected type — and a generic enum's
unit variant (`Holder::Empty`) likewise. And a binding's annotation cannot
name a parameter Nim is still inferring, so call sites run a small unifier:
the callee's declared parameter types are matched against the actual argument
types to bind `T`, and the result is substituted into the return type.

### Declaration order

Rust has no declaration-before-use rule and Nim does, so every proc is
forward-declared between the type definitions and the bodies. Reordering the
input instead would not handle mutual recursion.

### Type propagation is load-bearing

Rust infers an unsuffixed integer literal's type from context and falls back
to `i32`; Nim falls back to 64-bit `int`. So `lower.rs` threads an *expected
type* down through every expression — into `let` annotations, call arguments,
`match` patterns, compound assignments and both operands of a binary — and
annotates every binding it emits. Without that, `let x: u8 = 200; x + 100`
means two different things in the two languages. With it, a width the lowering
gets wrong becomes a Nim compile error (a loud failure, reported by the
runner) rather than a wrong answer.

## Mapping decisions made so far

- **Integers**: exact width. `i32``int32`, `usize``uint`, etc. `i128`/`u128`
  rejected.
- **Indexing**: both 0-based. Direct.
- **`&T`** → plain value. **`&mut T`** → `var T` parameter.
- **`&[T]`** → `openArray[T]` in parameter position, `seq[T]` when owned.
  `Nim::owned()` performs that conversion.
- **Ownership/borrowck**: ignored. Nim is GC'd; for safe Rust this is sound.
- **`Option`/`Result`** → object variants in the prelude.
- **`match`** → Nim `case` where the arms are simple, `if`/`elif` when arms have
  guards or bindings.
- **Rust's expression-orientation** maps well: Nim `if`/`case` are expressions
  too, and a proc's trailing expression is its return value.

### Settled empirically (Nim 2.2.4 vs rustc 1.98.1, both run)

1. **Nim's `shr` on a signed integer is arithmetic**, matching Rust.
   `int16(-256) shr 8` = `-1` in Nim; `(-256i16) >> 8` = `-1` in Rust.
   `base16ct`'s decoder depends on this, so it maps directly with no helper.
2. **Nim's fixed-width unsigned arithmetic wraps silently**, matching Rust's
   `wrapping_*`. `uint8(200) + 100` = `44` in Nim; `200u8.wrapping_add(100)`
   = `44` in Rust. So `wrapping_add` on an unsigned type is just `+`.

3. **We model rustc's debug profile.** Rust debug builds panic on signed
   integer overflow; Nim's default build raises `OverflowDefect` on it. Those
   are the matching pair, so the runner invokes `rustc` without `-O` and `nim
   c` with its defaults, and `tests/cases/016` pins the behaviour. A Rust
   panic exits 101 where a Nim Defect exits 1, so every generated module ends
   with a handler that maps one to the other — otherwise the runner's
   exit-status comparison would be vacuous. `wrapping_*` is therefore an
   explicit operation on both sides: unsigned maps to the bare operator (item
   2), signed is routed through the unsigned view of the same width.
4. **`char` round-trips.** Rust `char` → Nim `Rune`, confirmed for ASCII and
   non-ASCII scalars in both `{}` and `{:?}`, and across `as u32`
   (`tests/cases/014`).
5. **Nim's integer conversion `T(x)` truncates; it does not range-check.**
   `uint8(511'u16)` is `255`, `uint8(300'i32)` is `44`, `uint8(-1'i32)` is
   `255` — the same answers as `cast[uint8]`. An earlier version of this
   document asserted that `T(x)` range-checks, and used that to justify
   `cast`. The conclusion stands — `cast` is the clearer spelling of
   "truncate" — but the stated reason was wrong, and it had been assumed
   rather than probed. Found by sabotaging the cast lowering and watching the
   exhaustive proof *not* fail, which is what a sabotage test is for.

### Still open

6. Const generic parameters, `move` closures, closure bodies with statements,
   trait objects, `macro_rules!` definitions and raw pointers are rejected
   with a reason. A `trait` declaration lowers to nothing — trait resolution
   is not modelled — but one giving a method a *default body* is rejected,
   since that body is code with no impl to be emitted into.
   Lifetime parameters are *not* a rejection: they carry no runtime meaning
   and Nim is GC'd, so `fn encode<'a>(..)` lowers fine.
7. `saturating_*` and `checked_*` are implemented, detecting overflow on the
   unsigned view of the same width rather than with a range check that would
   itself trap. `wrapping_*`, `overflowing_*` and `strict_*` are not all
   covered: only add, sub and mul have the saturating and checked forms.
8. Float formatting matches Rust for ordinary values and for `inf`/`NaN`, but
   the exponent-form thresholds have only been checked at `1e21`.
9. Functions are scoped by module now, but *types* are still global: two
   modules declaring the same type name would collide. Relatedly, a crate's
   own `type Result<T>` is told apart from the builtin `Result<T, E>` by
   arity, which is not how Rust resolves it.
10. Host `#[cfg]` predicates — `unix`, `windows`, `target_os`, `target_arch`,
   `target_family`, `target_pointer_width`, `target_endian` — are evaluated
   against the machine, since the generated Nim is compiled for it. That makes
   the output host-shaped: a crate branching on platform has had that branch
   decided at transpile time. `doc`/`doctest`/`miri` are false. A custom or
   build-script `cfg` (`crossbeam_loom`, `target_has_atomic`) has no value we
   could know and is rejected.
11. Associated types (`impl Iterator { type Item = .. }`) and `mod`
   directories (`specialized/mod.rs`) are not implemented.
12. `String::from_utf8_unchecked` copies, because Nim's `string` is an owned
   value. Rust's consumes the `Vec` without copying. Observably the same from
   the caller, but it is a copy where Rust has none.

## A second crate: does this generalise, or is it fitted to `base16ct`?

`base16ct` is the crate this was built toward, so passing it proves less than
it looks. `adler2` 2.0.1 was picked as a deliberately different shape —
a stateful struct with methods, operator-overload trait impls, a hand-unrolled
four-lane inner loop — and it now works: `tests/cases/029-adler2-crate/`
transpiles `algo.rs` byte-for-byte as published, with `lib.rs`'s items and a
driver, and its checksums are byte-identical to rustc's across every single
byte, every length to 600 (crossing the 4-byte unrolling boundary and the
5552-chunk path), and 144 incremental-write splits.

It needed real work, which is the honest part of the answer. Ten features:
trait impls generalised beyond formatting and `From` (any trait's methods
become procs on the type, with the operator traits wired into `+=`/`+`
dispatch), `Self`, `Type::method()` static calls, `u32::from` between
primitives, tuple-destructuring `let`, `split_at`, iterators bound to
variables and `.remainder()`, `[0; 4]` as an array rather than a `seq`, and
the bare `#[cfg]` flags.

It also caught a **regression I had introduced**: the three-phase emission
added for forward declarations was silently dropping `const` items declared
*inside* a function body. `base16ct` has none, so 33 passing cases said
nothing about it.

### What the other crates did

Run without fixing anything, to see where the wall is rather than to move it:

| crate | outcome |
|---|---|
| `adler2` 2.0.1 | **works**, byte-identical |
| `siphasher` 1.0.1 | rejected: `u128` |
| `rustc-hash` 2.1.1 | rejected: `u128` |
| `hex` 0.4.3 | rejected: `impl Iterator` needs an associated type |
| `crc32fast` 1.5.0 | rejected: directory modules (`specialized/mod.rs`), then SIMD intrinsics |

Two of the five stop at `u128`, which is the founding rule doing its job
rather than a gap: they are told they cannot be translated instead of being
handed a silently truncated hasher. The other two are honest missing
features — associated types, and `mod` directories.

## How far off is a crate like `libcosmic`?

Measured, not guessed. Running rustnim over `libcosmic`'s own `src/`:

```
0 of 164 files produce any translation
50,633 lines, 112 direct dependencies
```

with 66 generic-parameter blockers, 20 trait objects, 51 `async` uses, 235
`where` clauses, 73 associated types and 1,104 lifetime annotations. Those are
not features the crate happens to use; they are its architecture. `libcosmic`
is a north star, not a next step.

### The blocker survey, and what it says about roadmaps

400 crates from the local registry (under 4,000 lines each), all their module
files passed together, first blocker recorded:

| blocker | start | +host-`cfg` | +generics | +assoc types |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unevaluable `#[cfg]` | 124 | 34 | 34 | 34 |
| generic type parameter | 69 | 91 | **1** | 1 |
| associated types in an `impl` | 54 | 63 | 87 | **2** |
| unsupported type | 20 | 29 | 60 | 71 |
| trait object | 17 | 25 | 30 | 35 |
| macro definition | 21 | 24 | 25 | 32 |
| raw pointer | 12 | 22 | 24 | 28 |
| **crates fully transpiled** | **2** | **2** | **2** | **3** |

This has now happened twice. Evaluating the host `#[cfg]` predicates cleared
90 of 124 blockers and moved the fully-working count by zero. Generics then
cleared 90 of 91 and moved it by zero again. Every crate each unblocked simply
hit its next blocker.

That is the shape of the problem: blockers are **deep, not wide**. A frequency
ranking of *first* blockers is not a roadmap — it says which feature is most
often first, not which one finishes a crate. `base16ct`, `adler2` and
`cosmic-theme`'s spacing model work because their whole stack was ground
through, one blocker at a time.

### Does the stack have a bottom?

If the stacks are drawn from one shared finite pool of language features, then
clearing the pool clears every stack at once, and the flat counts above are
just what progress looks like before a step change. That is a real possibility
and it is testable, so it was tested. Sampling every *file* of the 400 crates
rather than only each crate's first blocker — 1,766 blocker observations:

| | count | bounded? |
|---|---|---|
| distinct normalised blocker kinds | **63** | **yes — this is the language-feature pool** |
| distinct unsupported std methods | 80 | no — this is `std`'s surface |
| distinct unknown functions | 75 | no — these are calls into dependencies |
| distinct unsupported macros | 13 | no |

So the answer is *both*, split by class:

- **Language features do bottom out.** 63 distinct kinds, and each one cleared
  is cleared for every crate forever. This part is finite and the step-change
  intuition is correct for it. Associated types produced the first net gain
  (2 → 3), which is what that dynamic looks like starting.
- **The API surface does not.** 80 distinct `std` methods appeared in 1,766
  samples of *small* crates; `std` has thousands of items, and each needs a
  verified Nim equivalent rather than a guess. That is enumerable but it has
  no bottom you reach by clearing features.
- **Dependencies are not a pool at all.** 315 of the 400 crates depend on
  other crates, which have to be transpiled too, recursively, until the graph
  ends at `libc`, proc macros or SIMD intrinsics — which it does, and those do
  not translate.

And among the 85 dependency-free crates, 1 of 84 currently transpiles in full.
So even with dependencies removed from the picture, features alone are not the
only remaining gate.

So the ranking above is not a roadmap — it says which feature is most often
*first*, which is not the same as which feature finishes a crate. The only
honest way to add a crate is to pick it and clear its stack, as was done
twice.

Generics and associated types are now done. By frequency the next are
unsupported types (71), trait objects (35) and `macro_rules!` definitions (32)
— but see above before treating that as a plan.

### `cosmic-theme`: what was reachable

`tests/cases/032-cosmic-theme-spacing/` transpiles `corner.rs`, `spacing.rs`
and `layout.rs` from `cosmic-theme` 1.0.0 — the spacing scale, corner radii
and density model a COSMIC-native UI needs to match the desktop — with output
byte-identical to rustc's, including the `Density`/`Spacing` and
`Roundness`/`CornerRadii` round trips.

Those files are the crate's own, with one mechanical change recorded here: the
`use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize}` line and the `Serialize, Deserialize`
entries in two `derive` lists were removed, because the oracle is plain
`rustc` with no dependencies available. Nothing else was touched; rustnim
ignores both anyway.

The rest of `cosmic-theme``theme.rs` (1,830 lines), `color.rs`,
`cosmic_palette.rs`, `derivation.rs`, `steps.rs`, `composite.rs` — is colour
work built on `palette` (40,874 lines across 122 files, plus a proc-macro
crate). `mode.rs` needs `cosmic-config` and its derive macro. Those are
dependency walls, not language gaps.

## Proof of byte-identity for `base16ct`

[`PROOF.md`](PROOF.md) sets out what is actually established: exhaustive
agreement over every two-byte decode input (65,536), every two-byte encode
input (65,536), every single byte through `encode_str` and `HexDisplay`, and
every length to 128 — plus a compositional argument extending those to inputs
of any length, and 20,000 pseudorandom multi-chunk cases attacking the one
step in that argument that is inspection rather than enumeration. Run it with
`cargo test --test proof`. It is explicit about the difference between the
exhaustive parts and the sampled ones.

## Testing: differential, not golden

The bar is **behavioural equivalence with rustc**, not that the output looks
plausible. For each case in `tests/cases/`:

```
rustc case.rs && ./case            > expected
rustnim case.rs -o case.nim && nim c -r case.nim > actual
diff expected actual
```

A case only counts as passing when both binaries build *and* produce identical
stdout *and* exit with the same status.

`tests/differential.rs` implements this, and checks each stage separately so a
failure says where it went wrong: `rustnim`, `rustc`, `nim`, or `diff`. Three
guards exist specifically because of how the other transpiler failed:

- `rustnim` exiting 0 while writing **no output file** is a failure.
- `rustnim` exiting 0 while writing an **empty output file** is a failure.
- An **empty corpus** is a failure, so the runner cannot pass by finding
  nothing to do.

All three have been verified by deliberately breaking the transpiler and
confirming the runner goes red.

Cases carry directives in leading `//@` comments:

| directive | meaning |
|---|---|
| `//@ reject: <substring>` | `rustnim` must *fail*, with this in its message |
| `//@ skip: <reason>` | not run; reported as skipped |
| `//@ args: <argv>` | passed to both binaries |
| `//@ stdin: <line>` | fed to both binaries |

`reject` cases are how the "fail loudly" rule is tested rather than merely
stated: `900``904` pin the rejections of `i128`, an unmapped standard-library
method, a float→int cast, an unimplemented format spec, and a closure.

Run one case with `RUSTNIM_CASE=005 cargo test --test differential --
--nocapture`. Nim is found at `.nim-toolchain/bin/nim` in the repository root
or any parent, or via `RUSTNIM_NIM`.

## Toolchain

- `rustc` / `cargo` 1.98.1 — system.
- Nim 2.2.4 — vendored at `.nim-toolchain/` (gitignored; downloaded from
  nim-lang.org, not installed system-wide). Binary: `.nim-toolchain/bin/nim`.

## Milestone 1

Transpile `base16ct` 1.0.0 — the crate the other transpiler failed on — and
have its decoder produce byte-identical output to the Rust original.

**Reached.** `tests/cases/026-base16ct-crate/` transpiles **every source file
of base16ct 1.0.0** — `error.rs`, `lower.rs`, `upper.rs`, `mixed.rs` and
`display.rs`, each byte-for-byte as published on crates.io, verified with
`cmp` rather than by eye — together with `lib.rs`'s `decoded_len`,
`encoded_len` and `decode_inner` verbatim. The `alloc` half is on, via
`--cfg feature=alloc`. Output is byte-identical to rustc's:

```
lower ok abcd1234 len=4              decode: lower, upper, mixed
upper-rej err InvalidEncoding ...    upper correctly rejects lowercase
oddlen err InvalidLength / invalid Base16 length     <- Debug and Display
encode ok 6162636431323334 len=8     encode, both cases
encode_str ok abcd1234 len=8         closure over unsafe, borrowed &str
Ok([171, 205, 18, 52])               decode_vec       \
abcd1234                             encode_string     > the alloc half
ABCD1234 abcd1234                    HexDisplay {:X} {:x}
```

Everything lowers as written: `dst.get_mut(..decoded_len(src)?)`,
`src.chunks_exact(2).zip(dst.iter_mut())`, `*dst = byte as u8`, the returned
`&'a [u8]` view into the caller's buffer, `encode(src, dst).map(|r| unsafe {
core::str::from_utf8_unchecked(r) })`, and `HexDisplay`'s `UpperHex` impl
writing once per byte into the formatter.

This is the crate whose six files the transpiler in `findings/` emitted empty
output for, while exiting 0.