Preinit Transience (Also How Does Preinit Even Work) [TADS 3]

Authoring TADS
12

NOBODY PANIC; I HAVE FIGURED IT OUT!

Behold, the new set of compiler options:

## Makefile for an adv3Lite library game template

-I liblite
-D LANGUAGE=english
-Fy obj
-Fo obj
-FI /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/include
-FL /usr/local/share/frobtads/tads3/lib
-we
-v
-d
-pre

##sources
-lib system
-lib adv3Lite/adv3Lite
-source gameMain.t

-res
GameInfo.txt

I needed to include -pre if I was using -d, which means “use pre-initialization in a debug build, and this is a debug build”.

The reason why my project was taking so long to load was because, by default, debug builds (-d) skip pre-initialization, and instead perform it when the game normally loads, within the interpreter of your choice. This means that I was right in suspecting that pre-init was happening during the testing phase.

The reason for this is because you are able to log debug output during pre-init, as long as you do not include the -pre option. If you do include the -pre option, then pre-init does happen for your debug build, during compile. This means you effectively forfeit your opportunity to get logs during pre-init, as the compiler does not let you hear your program scream during this stage.

So, I am now able to confirm that I am correctly utilizing pre-init, and the data loads just fine! I also have some other funny observations:

  1. Transience does not matter during pre-init. If your data is transient, it’s welcome to come along for the ride; it’s just not allowed in save files, specifically. If you instantiate transient objects, they are saved into the pre-init result, just like everything else.
  2. It seems that @johnnywz00 was quite correct: If you do not want something saved during pre-init, just set it to nil when you’re done. Thank you, John!

Also, thanks again to @jnelson and @jbg for all the pointers so far!

Only one question remains:
Do I need to manually perform garbage collection with t3RunGC() before the end of execute() in a PreinitObject, or is garbage collection performed automatically before writing to the final gameMain.t3 file, after pre-init?

I just don’t want to accidentally save garbage memory to a game file during pre-init.

In software engineering, they say that the rubber duck method works wonders.

Clearly, it does.

However, I seem to have made the whole forum into a giant, collective, rubber duck, at least for a moment there. Hopefully, making myself a public mess in a manic state was informative, if not slightly entertaining. Thanks to everyone for allowing me space to do so, lol.

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