Issue #1147: Test blocks in tools/*.nika, lowered into the std crate’s tests (moves the compiler’s Rust unit tests into Nikaia)

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ready · opened 2026-11-01 · updated 2026-11-01 · 0 comments

Gap

About 900 lines of the compiler’s Rust are #[cfg(test)] unit tests of code that already lives in Nikaia. For example:

• contracts/send.rs:197-652 tests threads.nika crossing
• manifest.rs:272-512
• contracts/ty.rs:146-365

CLAUDE.md says an existing Rust test moves to Nikaia. These tests cannot move today:

• They call the tools’ functions directly, and a tests/compiler program cannot reach the tools’ functions.
• No tools/*.nika file may carry a test "..." { } block. The language has them (packages, nikaia test, ADR-247 / ADR-269), but lower-std does not take them.

Decision (supervisor, by the language principles)

This is an obvious extension: tests sit beside the code they test, in the language the code is written in. A test block in a tools file is the same form a package already has.

• A tools/*.nika file may hold test "name" { ... } blocks.
• lower-std lowers each one into the lowered file’s #[cfg(test)] mod tests as a #[test] fn, with the name made snake_case.
• cargo test -p nikaia-std runs them, and CI already runs that crate.
• The lowered .rs is output, as it is for everything else.
• Test blocks do not count toward the self-hosting share. Removing the Rust tests counts.

To build

1. lower-std takes test blocks in a tools file and writes them into #[cfg(test)] mod tests of its lowered .rs.
   • A test block’s assert lowers as it does in a function.
   • Probe: one test block in threads.nika asserting crossing of i64 is May.
   • If the lowering needs new Rust, the builder stops with Result: blocked, per CLAUDE.md.
2. Move contracts/send.rs’s tests (197-652) into test blocks in threads.nika / check_send.nika.
3. Move contracts/ty.rs’s tests into ty.nika.
4. Move manifest.rs’s tests (272-512) into manifest.nika. Tests that go through toml (codegen_for, items_of) become tests/compiler programs, or stay where they are with a note in the report.

Part of #125.

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