CoAgnes Labthe study space

The Nest Runtime Specification Set

The normative contract of the NestVM machine: what a conforming machine must record, how it must move, and the formats its programmes are written in. Published by the NestVM project under CC-BY-4.0 and presented here for study, volume by volume, with its text unchanged.

  1. 01OrientationVolumes 00–03: what is specified, the machine at a glance, the machine model and the wave log.
  2. 02The machine in referenceVolumes 04–08: the reference an implementer keeps open, and what a machine must do.
  3. 03AuthoringVolumes 09–10: for authors of systems on the machine.
  4. 04Where the machine growsVolumes 11–13: extension points, the widening discipline and the extension specifications.
  5. 05Conformance and vocabularyVolumes 14–15: what conforming means, and the vocabulary authority.

§How the set reads

The set states its own reading order, and Lab groups the sixteen volumes by it. Volumes 01–03 orient. Volumes 04–07 are the reference an implementer keeps open, and 08 defines what a machine must do. Volumes 09–10 are for authors of systems on the machine. Volumes 11–13 fix where, and how, the machine grows. Volume 14 defines what conforming means, and volume 15 is the vocabulary the rest of the set, and this whole site, answers to.

§How honest the set is about itself

Every volume carries one of four status labels, so that nothing declared is presented as enforced and nothing proposed as agreed. CURRENT is implemented in the reference implementation and covered by its regression suite. DECLARED is present in the authoring formats and validated by the compiler, but not enforced by the runtime. PROPOSED is agreed design direction, specified normatively but not yet implemented behaviour. SEED is conceptual direction, to be checked against real constraints before it hardens. Each volume's label is shown with it.

§Coming to it from the book

The specification is dense by design. A reader meeting the machine for the first time is better served by the book, which explains every construct in plain words first and cites the volume that governs it.