Backend Coverage

Backend support is not identical across artifacts. The authoritative inventory

for the current source feature coverage is compat/backend-coverage.tsv.

Tracked backends:

• OISA;
• C compatibility;
• direct ELF;
• relocatable object;
• archive;
• linker.

The matrix uses these statuses:

• supported: covered by the named evidence gate;
• not-applicable: the feature does not apply to that backend's release scope.

Current Boundary

The production backend parity boundary is explicit:

• production source conformance is native runtime, VM runtime, direct ELF

through runtime-cli, and unified WASM-shaped lowering;

• the conformance corpus covers functions, literals, text, lists, ADTs,

match, local imports, package imports, stdin, argv, env, stdout, and

runtime calls;

• OISA and C compatibility remain release-supported compiler compatibility

paths with their existing gates;

• object, archive, and linker are release-supported ABI artifact paths. They

validate symbols, relocations, deterministic archives, diagnostics, ABI

markers, and mixed-link behavior instead of claiming to lower every

high-level source runtime feature directly;

• host effects are executable runtime behavior, not object/archive/linker

source features.

Backend parity closure is the combination of this release-scoped boundary,

compat/backend-conformance.tsv, and

release/backend-conformance-report.json.

Gate

Use the bounded source gate for the matrix:

make backend-coverage-check

This gate validates the coverage matrix shape, required features, status values,

evidence targets, and links from the language spec, compatibility matrix,

release notes, and roadmap. It does not run broad compiler jobs.

Use the bounded conformance gate for release parity:

make backend-parity-closure-check

Production source conformance is checked by make backend-parity-closure-check.

That gate writes release/backend-conformance-report.json, compares output

hashes across production backends, and verifies that compatibility artifact

backends are represented by release-scoped ABI gates instead of hidden deferred

source claims.