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uses <header> throws away the header's function bodies, then imports them

PARTIALLY FIXED 2026-08-30, and still open on purpose. The scope term the reverted attempt was missing is now in (CModuleOfTok(TokPos - 1) < 0 — compile the body only when the tokens are not inside a crtl .c pull), the five gtk tests it broke are green, and the .h/.c pair test is in the gate. What is still broken is the common shape: a header that includes <stdio.h>/<string.h> — anything with a crtl src/*.c sibling — above the static, because the module attribution goes sticky and never comes back. That half is bug-a-c-module-attribution-is-sticky-after-a-crtl-impl-pull, filed against Track A because the table lives in dbg_filetable.inc. See "Where it stands" below for the measured boundary.

HISTORY — one earlier fix was TRIED AND REVERTED. The shape that failed was "detect a bodied static by scanning back over the specifiers (CDeclSawStatic) and let it fall through to ordinary compilation whenever we are in header-import mode." That is correct for a user's own header and it worked there; it is wrong because the same walk is entered by crtl's own module pulls, and compiling their bodies needs two things the header path cannot give (details in the REOPENED section). Do not re-derive that — read it. The forward plan is in "What the next attempt needs"; this banner exists because a parked ticket that records only the plan reads as untouched.

Measured, at 62714dc5eb06

(That sha does not exist in this repository — checked 2026-08-30. It was named before the push and the rebase rewrote it, which is the exact hazard bug-t-resolve-cites-a-sha-the-rebase-then-rewrites describes. The measurement below is unaffected: re-measured at 5ced3d9a0 with a HEAD-built compiler/pascal26 (fixedpoint 8cc79f5b6f77, converged after 1 round) — zzstat in a .h, called from a usesing .pas, still links NEEDED libzzhdr3.so and dies at load with rc 127.)

Same function, two files. Only the extension differs:

the file result
zzhdr3.h — static int zzstat(void) { return 4242; } ok:, then error while loading shared libraries: libzzhdr3.so
zzc.c — the same function ok:, runs, prints 4242

static inline — the shape that is in every real C header — behaves the same: libzzinl_h.so, same load failure. An UNCALLED bodied static is harmless: no DT_NEEDED, runs, exit 0. The damage requires a call.

The invariant, asserted in a comment, and false

cparser.inc, the header walk:

A HEADER declares and defines nothing, so its single registration pass is already the whole job

That reading is right for an FFI surface — sqlite3.h declares, libsqlite3.so defines — and it is not true of C headers in general: static and static inline definitions are ordinary, and for those there is no library to import from, because the definition is in the header.

The header path takes a function it was handed the body of, drops the body, marks it external, and synthesises a soname from the header's own stem (ConcatThree('lib', LowerCase(cName), '.so', ...)). Nothing in that chain can fail, which is why it is silent.

REOPENED — the first fix was landed and reverted (frankC, 2026-08-30)

Landed as eefa85d70, reverted the same night. It broke five gtk tests (test_c_gtk, -types, -window, -call, -gtk3_stock), all of them Pascal programs binding gtk3 through a C header. The revert restores all five; verified by building and running each, not by inference.

What the fix did: CDeclSawStatic scans backward over the specifiers the top-level walks skip without recording, and a bodied static in header-import mode was allowed to fall through to ordinary compilation instead of being externed. For a user's own header that is correct and it worked — the .h/.c pair agreed, no invented soname.

Why it was wrong, and this is the part to keep. The header walk is not reached only by the user's uses <header>. crtl's own modules flow through it too — uses gtk pulls gtk.h, which pulls stdlib.h, which brings lib/crtl/src/stdlib.c into the same token buffer and the same walk. Compiling its bodies uncovered two dependencies the header path cannot satisfy, one after the other:

  1. File-scope static VARIABLES are never reserved. The walk routes every declaration to ParseCSubroutine and never calls ParseCGlobalVarDecl, so pxx_env_load referencing pxx_env_buf / pxx_env_loaded failed with "undeclared identifier passed as argument 2 of __pxx_read, where a pointer is expected". Harmless for as long as the bodies were being thrown away, because nothing referenced them.
  2. With that patched, the body then needs the Pascal bridge. The next error was "__pxx_open is a pxx-internal runtime symbol and cannot be imported dynamically" — the crtl .c two-pass treatment supplies that; the header walk does not.

Two deeper dependencies on two successive patch attempts is the signal that the scope was wrong rather than the patches. Reverted instead of patched a third time.

What the next attempt needs

Scope the body-compilation by PROVENANCE, not by mode. The distinction that matters is not header-vs-.c; it is whose tokens these are. A bodied static from the header the user actually named should be compiled; one from a crtl module pulled in behind it should keep today's treatment, because that module has its own path that already works. CModuleOfTok(TokPos - 1) is the existing mechanism for exactly this question — it is what bug-c-static-functions-in-different-crtl-modules-collide uses to tell two same-named statics apart — and it is where I would start.

Do not reach for "make the header two-pass like a .c". That is a bigger change that pulls every usesd system header's static inlines into compilation, and the measurement above says the payoff does not need it: an uncalled bodied static is already harmless.

The rest of the original analysis (unchanged, still correct)

bug-a-a-c-include-path-captures-a-pascal-uses-and-emits-a-dynamic-import is about a C header winning a name it should not have won, and is a different defect. Fixing the resolver removes the collision for math / netdb / strings / png; a header with a non-colliding name still does this.

Options considered, with the reason option 1 was chosen: option 2 (refuse a bodied function in a header) is cheap and honest but breaks any header with a static inline beside the declarations you want, which is most system headers. Option 3 (keep the extern, drop the invented soname) turns a load error into a link error without fixing the wrong answer. Option 1 (compile the body) is what static inline means and what the C standard's separation of internal and external linkage already implies — it just has to be scoped to the right tokens.

Test material from the reverted attempt

Worth re-creating rather than re-deriving; it is a correct test of the intended behaviour and it passed for a user's own header:

And add a gtk test to the gate for it. The five that caught this are Pascal programs binding a C header; nothing in the C test corpus exercises that path, which is why the change looked clean on 37 named C tests and a quick gate.

Where it stands after 2026-08-30 — the measured boundary

The fix compiles a bodied static from a usesd header only when the token is not attributed to a crtl .c module. Measured, varying only what the header includes above the static:

the header includes above the static result
nothing fixed
"user.h" (a header with no crtl impl) fixed
<stddef.h>, <stdint.h>, <stdbool.h>, <limits.h>, <errno.h> fixed
<stdio.h>, <string.h> and any other header with a crtl src/*.c still broken
<stdio.h> placed below the static fixed

The scope term is necessary — without it the walk compiles crtl's own module bodies, which is what broke five gtk tests and got the first attempt reverted — and it is not sufficient, because CModuleOfTok never resets when an include returns to its parent. stddef.h and stdio.h differ in exactly one thing: whether crtl has an impl to auto-pull. Nothing about the static changes.

So the remaining work is not in this lane's files at all. It is bug-a-c-module-attribution-is-sticky-after-a-crtl-impl-pull, which carries the measurement, the reason the current consumer is not regressed by fixing it, and the shape to build. Do not attempt the rest of this ticket before that one lands — a third scoping mechanism over the same walk is the failure mode this ticket has already produced once.

One methodology note worth keeping

I reached the wrong boundary twice before this table was right.

Each of those produced a confident, wrong sentence that would have gone into this ticket. The table above is from the third measurement, with distinct names and a formatter that can represent the answer.

Gate

Track C's, plus the .h/.c pair, plus at least one gtk binding test (test_c_gtk needs no X server and reproduces the breakage on its own).

Log

Closed 2026-09-04 (frankC) — and the reason it stayed open is the finding

The remaining work was never in this lane. It was bug-a-c-module-attribution-is-sticky-after-a-crtl-impl-pull, which resolved on 2026-08-30 — and this ticket sat in unfinished/ for five days carrying the sentence "Do not attempt the rest of this ticket before that one lands" after it had landed.

That sentence is exactly the shape franks-ab flagged the same day in rung 1's write-up and frank-coordinator-2c generalised: a body routinely holds OPERATIVE text, and the test is not where it sits but what a reader DOES with it. A session arriving here would have read a stand-down order sourced from a blocker in done/.

CORRECTION, written the same hour as the paragraph it replaces. I first wrote here that tools/progress.sh check had a blind spot and failed to flag this. That was wrong, and I had not checked before writing it — the same fault this ticket is otherwise about.

What is actually true, read out of tools/progress.py:

So the damage here was never ranking — it was the stale SENTENCE. The ticket was rankable the whole time, and a session that took it would have read Do not attempt the rest of this ticket before that one lands about a blocker already in done/. That is a documentation failure with no automated owner, which is exactly franks-ab's and frank-coordinator-2c's point: the test is what a reader DOES with the text, and no folder or edge check measures that.

The cheapest catch was never the tooling. The repro takes fifteen seconds.

The soname assertions had no way to fail, and now they do (frankC, 2026-09-04)

franks-ab pushed back on the paragraph above in its first form. I had labelled the new <stdio.h> row's control inherited — honest, but their point was sharper than the label: a row whose control is inherited from a different row is one refactor away from being a row that cannot fail.

The specific hole: both soname assertions check a pattern is ABSENT, and on a fixed compiler these binaries have no dynamic section at all. "No match" is the right answer and is indistinguishable from a grep that could never match. The other direction used to be reachable with a pre-fix compiler; the pin now postdates the fix, so that control had quietly become uncheckable.

hdrstatic_ffi.h supplies it without one. A bare declaration must KEEP its old treatment — it is the FFI surface and is supposed to become an external import — so calling it produces exactly the artefact the bug produced: DT_NEEDED: libhdrstatic_ffi.so. Correct behaviour in this file, a defect two files over, identical observable. Measured: the pattern is present.

So one row asserts the pattern absent and its neighbour asserts the same pattern present, on the same compiler, from headers reached the same way. The control's failure message says what its silence would mean, because a dead positive control is worse than no assertion: it prints PASS.

The binary is built and never run — it cannot load, and it is not meant to.