Contributing

This project is young, opinionated in places, and looking for people willing to push back on those opinions. If something in the specs or the code reads as "obviously the right call" and you don't think it is, that's exactly the kind of issue worth opening.

The full pitch — what SxfeScript adds over TypeScript, what ArcSX is, and what's open for debate versus fixed — is on the project's documentation site, built from docs/index.html and published by .github/workflows/docs.yml. The short version:

Genuinely open to change, including disagreement with the current approach: the shape and scope of safe/unsafe, which TypeScript forms get real support next, ownership and borrow-checking rules and their error messages, node:/WinterCG coverage priorities, naming, ergonomics — and the underlying ideas themselves. If you think the ownership model solves the wrong problem, open an issue and make the case.

Not open to change: ArcSX has no JIT and never will. iOS does not grant JIT entitlements to third-party apps, so a machine-code tier is not a slower version of this runtime on that platform — it's an absent one. That constraint is why this project exists in this shape; it isn't a preference up for a vote.

The spec/ directory is the actual design surface, not settled history:

• spec/LANGUAGE.md — the SxfeScript language contract
• spec/ABI.md — the native/JS boundary
• spec/NATIVE.md — Sxn.ffi vs .node addons, and why they're split
• spec/RUNTIME.md / spec/NODE.md — what's supported, as a runtime and as a Node alternative
• spec/IMPLEMENTATION.md — what's real today, what's measured, what's still open
• spec/BYTECODE.md — precompiled .sxbc bytecode
• spec/PERFORMANCE.md — the benchmark numbers in the README, explained

cmake --preset debug
cmake --build --preset debug
ctest --preset debug

Run tests against a Debug build — QuickJS's leak tracking is compiled out of Release, so ctest --preset release can't catch a leaked atom or object the way Debug does. See the README's Build section for system dependencies.

A pull request that changes behavior should come with a fixture under tests/fixtures/ and a ctest registration in CMakeLists.txt — most existing fixtures assert against Node's own output for the same code, which is worth matching where the change touches Node compatibility.

This page is generated from CONTRIBUTING.md. Machine-readable copies of the whole set: llms.txt, llms-full.txt.