DOCUMENTATION / experiments/odin/README.md

Odin compiler and ABI probe

This is an isolated language-evaluation experiment. It leaves the Luau player and its native/browser builds unchanged. See the evaluation for architectural conclusions and outstanding work.

game.odin exports scalar C-style procedures for initialization, input-driven movement, state inspection, and a bounds-check probe. It models the existing example's initial position, movement, action edge, and sound-event count. It does not draw a sprite, play audio, or reproduce the example's pointer input and visual bobbing.

main_windows.odin is a small native console driver, selected only for Windows. verify.mjs builds both variants, runs the Windows driver, and instantiates the identical freestanding Wasm binary in Node and a real browser through Playwright. It compares 120 updates and checks an intentional out-of-bounds trap. Native execution here means a separate Odin executable. This historical probe predates the current Odin player, which embeds Wasmtime and runs both cartridge languages; the original C++ player has been removed.

Reproduce on Windows

Prerequisites: Odin compiler, native linker prerequisites from the Odin installation guide, Node.js, and this repository's pinned Playwright development dependency. The tested compiler is dev-2026-10-nightly:84bc3fc from the dev-2026-10 release.

With odin on PATH, run from the repository root:

npm ci
npx playwright install chromium
node experiments/odin/verify.mjs

An optional compiler path argument supports a local installation. Set PLAYER_BROWSER_CHANNEL=chrome in the environment to use installed Chrome:

mise exec -- node experiments/odin/verify.mjs

The command uses the compiler installed by mise install, unless an explicit compiler path argument is supplied. The probe does not install its own compiler.

Artifacts are written under ignored build/odin/, including report.json. The verifier records three sequential build wall times with -o:minimal; these are not cold-cache timings or an edit-to-first-frame benchmark. Each child process has a 30-second timeout. The probe requires Windows for its native executable; the generated Wasm itself was tested in Node and Chrome.

Limits

This does not test allocator integration, heap caps, host offset validation, metering, worker recovery, C++ guest-engine embedding, source-level runtime diagnostics, actual graphics/audio, PNG packaging, or state-preserving reload. A decision to replace Luau requires those integration checks. Do not add this experiment to the production build or CI as a supported second game language without a separate decision.