Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5
cc6c8c43f3
ABORT is documented and tested in this codebase as standard FORTH-79 behavior -- system_words_test.c:63: "Should clear stacks and return to QUIT" -- meaning it should unwind all the way back to the outermost interpreter loop, abandoning whatever's left of the current line/block. The implementation only unwound one level: every place that checked vm->abort_requested cleared it the instant it saw it, so it never survived to propagate past the first nested frame. This surfaced via Artemis's ART-HALT-UNRECOG (capsules/artemis/init.4th): on an unrecognized disk it correctly printed "ARTEMIS HALT: unrecognized disk content" and called ABORT, but WELCOME (the next line in the same block) ran anyway, and Artemis announced ready to Hermes and joined the fleet normally -- contradicting .claude/ARTEMIS.md's "Refuse to mount... do not overwrite it" requirement. Root cause is general, not Artemis-specific, and present identically in both the hosted and kernel VM cores. Fixed at every level execution can nest through, verified by exhaustively grepping every !vm->error-gated continuation loop and adding the parallel !vm->abort_requested check: - execute_colon_word (src/vm.c, src/starkernel/vm/vm_core.c): stop clearing the flag on return -- every colon-word call is a recursive call to this same function, so leaving it set lets every enclosing frame's own check also unwind. - vm_interpret (src/vm.c, src/starkernel/vm/vm_core.c): stop parsing further words in the current input string once the flag is set. - exec_block_with_retry (src/starkernel/capsule/capsule_loader.c): capsule birth's line-by-line block executor -- stop processing further lines in the current block, but return 0 (not -1), so capsule_exec_payload still loads later blocks in the same capsule payload. Returning -1 here would have silently broken word definitions in blocks that come after the aborting one for reasons unrelated to why it aborted (concretely, Artemis's ART-PING/LOAD-DOE in blocks 4851/4852, which follow the entry block 4133). - THRU and --> (src/word_source/block_words.c): stop processing further blocks/lines in their own loops. - DODOES (src/word_source/defining_words.c): the CREATE...DOES> runtime has its own hand-rolled execution loop, separate from execute_colon_word -- same bug class, same fix. Also guarded the post-loop "if (vm->rsp < base_rsp) vm->rsp = base_rsp" clamp so it doesn't fire on an abort exit -- ABORT's own reset_vm_state() already set rsp; restoring it to base_rsp would have partially undone that. - Both REPL loops (src/repl.c, src/starkernel/repl.c x2 call sites): clear the flag after each line, mirroring the existing vm->error pattern, so a mid-line abort doesn't silently freeze subsequent interactive input. Verified directly: ": AB-TEST 1 2 3 ABORT 999 . ; AB-TEST 42 . CR 777 . CR" -- 999 never prints (stops mid-colon-word), 42 never prints (stops the rest of the same line), 777 prints fine (next line unaffected). Artemis: WELCOME/"Artemis ready" no longer fires after the halt message. No regression: all three architectures still show PASS: persist-read, PASS: E2E msg flow, and matching dict_hash on the normal (non-aborted) boot path; hosted test suite 965 passed / 0 failed. Known follow-up, not fixed here (see memory for details): Artemis still announces ready to Hermes via a separate call path (CD-INIT, block 4141) that never went through capsule_exec_payload's block chain in the first place, and the disk file still picks up incidental writes even on a correctly-halted boot -- likely generic block-subsystem housekeeping, not traced yet. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
disk/
QEMU disk images used for Artemis (block-storage VM) persistence testing.
Mounted via Makefile.starkernel's ARTDISK variable (default
disk/artemis.img) as a virtio-blk-pci device on all three
architectures' kernel QEMU boots — not scripts/rundisk.sh, which targets
a separate, currently-unused disks/ (plural) directory for the hosted
VM's --disk-img= flag instead.
artemis.img— standard Artemis persistence test disk. Reformatted 2026-08-02: this image had been stuck in a corrupted state (validLithosAnankemagic header, but data not matching whatART-READ-TESTexpects) since before this repo's own git history begins (git logshows it already broken at the initial commit, carried over from the pre-split monorepo). Chasing down the resulting persistentFAIL: persist-readtraced to the data, not the code — the write→reboot→read round trip works correctly on a fresh image (seeartemis-debug-roundtrip.imgbelow). Reformatted by blanking the file and letting a normal boot format+write-test it; verifiedPASS: persist-readon amd64, aarch64, and riscv64 against the same image afterward (cross-arch resume, matching the arch-neutral on-disk format.claude/ARTEMIS.mdspecifies).artemis-debug-roundtrip.img— round-trip regression fixture created during that investigation. Known-good: format → self-test → write-test → reboot → resume →PASS: persist-read, confirmed 3 times in a row. Keep this in a passing state; if a future change breaks it, that's a real regression, not a stale-fixture artifact likeartemis.imgwas.artemis-persist-test.img— persistence round-trip test image (pre-existing; history/state not re-verified during the above investigation).artemis-poison.img— a separate test image (exact scenario not documented elsewhere in the repo as of this writing; name suggests an adversarial/corruption test, not confirmed).
These are regenerable QEMU raw disk images, not source — see
.claude/ARTEMIS.md for the storage model they exercise.