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Windows Port — Technical Notes

Status (2026-03-21)

The IDE compiles and launches on Windows. The setup screen works fully. The full workbench launches but crashes after ~10-20 seconds due to a timer callback hitting a continuation function with incorrect type info. This is being actively fixed in the Perry compiler.

Perry Compiler Changes

All changes are in the perry repo. Zero TypeScript changes were needed.

1. Windows Linker Dedup (compile.rs)

Problem: Perry links two Rust staticlibs (perry-stdlib and perry-ui-windows) that both bundle transitive deps (std, alloc, core, perry-runtime). On Windows, duplicate CRT init entries cause crashes, and /FORCE:MULTIPLE produces corrupt binaries.

Fix: Rewrote the dedup to use the rlib (not staticlib) for perry-ui-windows. The rlib contains only the UI crate's own code. UI-only dependencies are identified via set-difference against perry-stdlib's member list. Applied to ALL native libs (editor + UI). Also filters out allocator shim CGUs from rlib extraction.

Scope: Windows only (is_windows guard). macOS/Linux/iOS paths untouched.

2. Function Splitting (functions.rs)

Problem: Cranelift generates incorrect machine code for very large functions (>3MB compiled code, ~240K relocations) on Windows. The renderWorkbench function (5000 lines TS, 131 HIR statements) triggers this.

Fix: When a function has >50 top-level statements and targets Windows, the compiler splits it into continuation functions. Each continuation takes a pointer to a stack-allocated locals buffer, loads variables at entry, compiles its chunk of statements, stores variables back, and returns a status code (0=continue, 1=early-return).

Scope: Windows only (compile_target == 3 guard).

3. Missing FFI Symbols (perry-ui-windows/lib.rs)

Added 23 missing #[no_mangle] FFI functions:

  • Device/screen stubs (perry_get_screen_width, etc.) — iOS-only, stub on all desktop
  • TextArea (create, get/set string)
  • TextField focus (set_on_focus, blur_all)
  • Stack alignment, overlay, edge insets
  • App icon, file polling
  • Splitview/VBox/FrameSplit stubs

Removed 8 duplicate stubs (backOff, js_fetch_, js_crypto_, js_ws_handle_to_i64) that conflicted with perry-stdlib.

Scope: Windows-only crate.

4. RefCell Re-entrancy (perry-ui-windows/widgets/mod.rs)

Problem: Win32 message loop sends WM_SIZE during ShowWindow, which calls layout code that borrows the widget registry while it's already mutably borrowed → RefCell panic.

Fix: All w.borrow() calls in message-loop-reachable code now use try_borrow() with graceful fallback (return None/0).

Scope: Windows-only crate.

5. Runtime Null Safety (perry-runtime)

Problem: Functions returning *mut StringHeader returned null on error. Perry's try/catch can't catch null-pointer segfaults, so callers that access .length on the result crash.

Fixes:

  • readFileSync → returns empty string instead of null on error
  • execSync → returns empty string instead of null on error
  • js_nanbox_string(null) → allocates empty string instead of boxing null
  • js_nanbox_get_pointer → now extracts JS_HANDLE_TAG (0x7FFB) values
  • inline_get_string_pointer → null guard for zero input

Scope: All platforms. Strictly safer behavior.

6. Stack Size (compile.rs)

Reserve 64MB stack on Windows (was 1MB default). Large codebases with 100+ module init functions need more stack space.

Scope: Windows only (MSVC /STACK: flag).

7. Layout Guard (perry-ui-windows/layout.rs)

Replace unwrap() on get_widget_info() in layout_stack with graceful fallback, preventing panics during re-entrant layout passes.

Scope: Windows-only crate.

Known Remaining Issue

The full workbench crashes after ~10-20 seconds. The function splitting continuation functions use is_union: true for ALL locals, losing the original type information (is_string, is_pointer, etc.). When a continuation accesses a string variable, it treats the i64 pointer as f64, causing a type mismatch crash. Fix: preserve LocalInfo type flags across the split boundary.

Build Instructions

# Build all Perry crates together (shared perry-runtime compilation)
cd ../perry
cargo build --release -p perry-ui-windows -p perry-stdlib -p perry

# Copy libs to hone-ide
cp target/release/perry_ui_windows.lib ../hone/hone-ide/target/release/
cp target/release/libperry_ui_windows.rlib ../hone/hone-ide/target/release/
cp target/release/perry_stdlib.lib ../hone/hone-ide/target/release/
cp target/release/perry_runtime.lib ../hone/hone-ide/target/release/

# Compile IDE
cd ../hone/hone-ide
perry compile src/app.ts --target windows --output hone-ide
mv hone-ide hone-ide.exe