2 posts tagged with "comptime"

v0.2 lands three things that matter together: a real algebraic-data-type surface (enum payloads, Result<T, E>, unified pattern matching), an SMT verifier that fails closed where it used to fail silently (--explain cores, vacuity detection, datatype encoding for products and error unions), and the first slice of a static-dispatch trait system (impl conformance, bounded generics, extern trait for ABI-correct external calls). Underneath them: bounded loop unrolling and ADT-aware comptime, an LSP that reflects the new surface, and a debugger DAP server.

This post walks through what's in the box, with code that compiles today.

Smart contracts live in a harsher environment than normal software: execution is expensive, everything is observable, and complexity becomes attack surface. "Good compilation" isn't just about speed—it's about predictability. Smaller runtime code. Fewer branches. Fewer guards. Less that can go wrong.

Ora's comptime pipeline exists to enforce that. When an expression is provably constant, the compiler evaluates it during compilation, replaces it with a literal, and lets the rest of the pipeline operate on something simpler than what the developer wrote.

That sounds obvious. In practice, it's one of the places where many smart-contract toolchains accumulate accidental complexity.