Spec M14 — project driver and mc.toml

Goal: a developer with only the mc binary builds a project by running mc build in its directory. Everything lives in src/*.mc (stage0 untouched). The single-file CLI (mc in.mc -o out.o, --exe, --backend=, --dump-*) keeps working unchanged.

CLI #

• mc build [DIR] [--config FILE] — DIR defaults to .; config defaults to DIR/mc.toml. Errors name the config file with line:col.
• mc build prints one line per step (compile main.mc -> build/app.o, link ...) and exits 1 on the first failure with the tool's stderr passed through.

mc.toml (subset of TOML, deterministic order of keys as written) #

[project]
name  = "api"
entry = "main.mc"          # relative to the TOML directory
out   = "build/api"        # relative to the TOML directory; parent dirs created
kind  = "exe"              # exe | obj

[target]
os   = "macos"             # macos | linux | windows   (M14 implements macos only; others -> clear error)
arch = "aarch64"

[compiler]                 # optional: build a taught compiler first, then use it for `entry`
modules = ["oop.mc"]       # each is #include'd after the compiler core; user_init must be defined by one of them
out     = "build/mc-api"   # default build/mc-<name>

[linker]                   # optional; when absent on macos, kind=exe uses the built-in macho-exe backend
cmd  = "ld"
args = ["-o", "{out}", "{obj}", "-lSystem", "-syslibroot", "{sdk}", "-arch", "arm64", "{libs}"]

[libs]                     # named libraries; on macos a dylib path bound by ordinal, elsewhere passed to the linker
sqlite3 = "/usr/lib/libsqlite3.dylib"

[externs]                  # symbol or prefix* -> lib name; unlisted externs default to libSystem
"sqlite3_*" = "sqlite3"

[include]
paths = ["lib"]            # extra search roots for #include "x" after the includer's directory

• Parser (src/toml.mc): tables [a.b], arrays of tables [[x]] (parsed, kept for later), key = value with basic strings (escapes \" \\ \n \t), integers, booleans, arrays of strings or integers (multi-line allowed), comments #, bare and quoted keys. Anything else is an error with line:col. Result: a flat table of (path, value) in source order plus toml_get(path), toml_get_array(path, i), toml_count(path); tomldump driver (src/tomldump.mc) prints it.
• [externs] feeds the same table #dylib uses (extern_lib_add); ordinals are assigned to [libs] in the order they appear. #dylib in source still works and takes precedence for its own externs.
• {out} {obj} {libs} {sdk} placeholders in [linker].args; {sdk} runs xcrun --show-sdk-path lazily (only when used). The linker is spawned with posix_spawn + waitpid (libSystem externs added to lib/sys.mc); non-zero exit propagates.

Tests #

• tests/toml/*.toml with *.expect dumps; scripts/check-toml.sh compares tomldump output; a few malformed files with expected file:line:col errors.
• examples/api/mc.toml: mc build examples/api builds the taught compiler, then build/api, and examples/api/test.sh passes against it. The Makefile keeps working as an alternative.
• make check green; golden rewritten once with the empty --dump-asm diff shown.

Out of scope (M15/M16) #

#include <name> from the bundle, #embed, foreign targets ([target].os != macos is a clear error).

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